Bride & Groom

by Conant, Susan

  “Well, my favorite was Moated Passion, but Towering Love was pretty good, too. The new one is Highborn Rapture. I just got it, but I haven’t started it yet. So what do you write?”

  I abandoned eavesdropping. “Judith’s new book is about a woman warrior,” I told Carla. “A queen. It’s set in England during the Roman occupation.”

  “I love queens! And we’re Italian ourselves, my husband and me. What’s it called?”

  “Boudicca.” I didn’t offer to lend Carla my copy. She could afford to buy the book, and Judith needed every hardcover sale she could get.

  “Presents!” Ceci announced. “Let’s all get together by the fireplace!”

  As we gathered for the ritual, I spotted Rita at the periphery of the group. She was no longer talking with anyone, but lurking silently and looking as if she wanted to disappear altogether. When Leah joined me and nearly shoved me to a seat in the middle of the couch, I murmured, “Let’s get Rita to sit with us.”

  For once, instead of speaking so that everyone could hear every word she enunciated, Leah whispered. “One of her patients is here. She wants to keep a low profile.”

  Rita ran into her patients all the time at restaurants, at movies, in shops, and at parties. She saw them in the pool at her health club and, worse, in the sauna, where, of course, they saw her, too. When I was with Rita during these encounters, I could always identify her psychotherapy patients as such because Rita would suddenly make what I recognized as an effort to behave as if she weren’t privy to all sorts of secrets that these people hid from everyone but her. I was always itching to know the details of the hidden lives of these apparently ordinary people, but Rita never violated her patients’ privacy. On the contrary, unless she was desperate, she wouldn’t even admit that a particular person whose appearance had suddenly caused her to assume an expression of ultranormality was, in fact, one of her patients.

  The first present I opened was from Carla Guarini: a black lace teddy and a matching thong. The gift drew laughs and exclamations that delighted Carla, who, I felt sure, was not Rita’s patient. As I unwrapped the next package, it occurred to me that Rita had been outgoing and talkative, albeit in a rather brittle fashion, until the arrival of the last guest.

  Who had been the last to arrive? Judith Esterhazy.

  CHAPTER 31

  More than any other human being I’d ever known, my stepmother, Gabrielle, established a special connection with everyone she met. When people described her as charming, they really meant that she made them feel uniquely understood and appreciated. They didn’t just feel that way, either; Gabrielle was genuinely fascinated by everyone. Consequently, the world worked better for Gabrielle than it does for the rest of us. Repair persons returned her calls and efficiently fixed her appliances. Auto mechanics took pains to make sure that her car was safe. Doctors and dentists squeezed her in ahead of other patients. Even my impossible father was in her thrall. For example, had it not been for Gabrielle, Buck would not only have managed to attend my bridal shower, but would have done so dressed for a hunting expedition and accompanied by a large pack of dogs. As it was, she’d contrived to leave him in Maine, the state slogan of which is, of course, “Maine: The Way Life Should Be.” When it comes to my father, that’s my slogan, too, more or less: “Buck Far Away: The Way Life Should Be.”

  All this is to say that one reason I adored Gabrielle was that she possessed what I’d previously believed to be the exclusive power of Alaskan malamutes: the enchanting ability to make everyone feel special. Like Rowdy, Kimi, and Sammy the pup, she was observant, intelligent, and responsive. Her energy was theirs. At eleven o’clock on Sunday night, for instance, Gabrielle was still talking away, examining every wedding present Steve and I had received, asking about Paris, and deepening her relationship with Sammy the puppy, who was no more eager to let me go to sleep than she was. We were in my guest room, which served as Wedding Central. My gown hung in the closet, and presents were everywhere.

  “Now, I know that you need to get to bed,” said Gabrielle, sipping from a glass of wine I’d just refilled for her. “This is going to be the busiest week of your life. But I want to reassure you that even though your father and I will get here on Friday, we aren’t going to be underfoot. Are you sure you want Buck and me to stay here? We could easily find a hotel. Or maybe Rita would put us up. She seems happy to have me use her guest room tonight, although there does seem to be something a little off with her. She seems fragile. Trouble with a man?”

  “Of course you’re not going to a hotel! The beds on the third floor aren’t too bad. Steve had them in storage, but they’re all set up. You and Buck are going to be in one room, and Twila Baker is going to have the other. Buck is going to be so crazy about one of her dogs, North, that we’ll be lucky if he remembers the wedding. Steve’s dogs will be in that apartment, too, at least some of the time, but Buck obviously won’t mind, and Twila won’t, either. She’s used to teams of malamutes. She’ll have her whole team with her, but except for North, they’ll be outside in her dog trailer. Steve’s three dogs and the two you’re bringing won’t bother her at all. She’ll probably harness them up and put them to work. Actually, she’ll be staying here all week, until she goes to mushing boot camp. Are you and Buck still...?”

  “Your father promises me that the accommodations are nothing short of luxurious,” Gabrielle said. “He may be exaggerating a tiny bit. He and I do, after all, have rather divergent opinions of what constitutes luxury. But I simply didn’t have the heart to crush his enthusiasm, especially after he’d reconciled himself to having you and Steve go to Paris instead, not to mention the matter of Althea’s performing the service.”

  If I’d tried to enlighten Gabrielle about the true nature of mushing boot camps, we’d have been up for another few hours. By the time I crawled into bed, it was midnight. Steve was asleep, and eager though I was to talk to him about Judith Esterhazy, I couldn’t bear to awaken him. We had no chance to talk in the morning, either. Gabrielle ate breakfast with us, and then Steve left for work. For the rest of the day, I was frantically busy. Gabrielle left for Maine at nine. After that, I stowed all five dogs in crates and supplied them with giant black rubber Kong toys that I’d stuffed with goodies and placed in the freezer. Having bought silence, I did two radio interviews that Mac had set up for me, one with a local station, the other with a station in California. Both so-called interviews consisted mainly of my listening to weather reports, station identification information, and news updates. The local station’s news made no mention of the serial killings. The California weather sounded enviable. Our Cambridge weather was sunny and warm, too, so I was able to wash and groom Rowdy and Kimi outdoors. Mac had arranged to have a reporter from a small local paper do an article about my book. The reporter was going to get here at three, and I wanted the dogs looking their best because she was going to be accompanied by a photographer. The newspaper wasn’t the Globe or the Herald, but promotion was promotion, and I wanted the dogs to create a good impression. Once they looked terrific, I cleaned the house, took a shower, and fixed myself up. The reporter arrived late and stayed for two hours. We talked mainly about the problems she was having with her Gordon setter, problems attributable to her failure to give the dog any exercise, as I tried to tell her in a tactful manner. After she left, I worried that her article would portray me as a nasty, critical person whose book no one should buy.

  After I’d fed all the dogs and given them time outdoors, I tried to ease my worries about the interview by checking the web sites of the big online booksellers. Browsing by category, I got to Home and Garden, then to Pets, then to Dogs, and finally to Care and Feeding. Ridiculous! If I did the categorization, Dogs would a subcategory of Religion. Anyway, having slightly narrowed the field of comparison, I found that 101 Ways to Cook Liver was doing just great; in fact, if there’d only been a subcategory of liver cookbooks for dogs, I’d have had a bestseller. I also checked on Ask Dr. Mac, which was selling even better th
an 101 Ways to Cook Liver, and, alas for literature, about 1001 times better than Judith Esterhazys Boudicca.

  At about the time I finished “ego surfing,” as it’s called, searching the web for oneself, Steve arrived home with the takeout food he’d promised to pick up because he’d known how busy I was going to be. Sammy, who was loose in the kitchen, sniffed the bag.

  “I feel guilty,” I said. “You’d rather have real food than sushi.”

  “Your greatest fear about getting married isn’t that we’ll end up miserable or that I’ll cheat on you. It’s that you’ll get stuck cooking every night. And I don’t mind sushi. I like horseradish and ginger. And this isn’t just sushi. I got shrimp.”

  “My greatest fear is economic dependence,” I said. “But speaking of cheating, I have been dying to talk to you since yesterday afternoon. I love Gabrielle, but we haven’t had a second together when we’ve both been awake, and this is about one of Rita’s patients. It’s confidential.”

  “Stop worrying about money. We’re in this together.”

  “In a million years, I’m never going to earn half what you do.”

  “So what? It doesn’t bother me. We do different things. We do things we love. We love each other. We share. Let it go, Holly.”

  “It’s not that I want the kind of marriage where each of us pays exactly half of the electric bill and the gas bill and so on, and where we have to figure out who made which phone calls, and how much of the dog food got eaten by whose dogs.”

  “Yours steal more food than mine. We’d have to factor that in.”

  “Sammy does his share. Don’t you, Sammy? And he’s the only one who chews books.”

  “We’d have to hire a bookkeeper. Forget it. It’s a socialist marriage. To each according to need. That’s all. It’s easy.”

  “Yes, but what’s really a need? As opposed to a want? Or a whim?”

  He laughed. “Dogs are a need. All the rest is extravagance. Let’s eat.”

  As we set the kitchen table and spread out the food, we both kept an eye on Sammy, who had never been fed at the table, except possibly by Kevin, but who hadn’t given up hope, either. When Steve and I sat down opposite each other, Sammy eased his nose onto the table and rested his chin.

  “Leave it,” Steve told him and then finally said to me, “So, what’s up?”

  “Judith Esterhazy,” I said. “She was a patient of Rita’s. Yes, no big deal, except that I think I know more about her than I’m supposed to. The day that Rita and I went shopping and had dinner at the mall, Rita had two margaritas and some wine. I was driving. Anyway, she started telling me about a patient of hers. No names, of course. And Rita wasn’t gossiping. She was talking about a dilemma she was in. She couldn’t tell what reality was. The patient was a woman who thought her husband was cheating on her. The husband said that the wife was paranoid. The woman had stopped treatment. That’s the gist of it. And later, when I asked Rita, she said that she should never have said anything. What I think is that the woman was Judith.”

  “Rita didn’t make any connections?”

  “Why would she? I knew something was up yesterday, at the shower, because Rita was being her social self. She wants to keep up a brave front. She was valiant. She was talking to everyone. And then all of a sudden, she stopped. She had that look that she gets when one of her patients shows up. You’ve seen it.”

  He dipped a piece of sushi in soy sauce. “Yeah, it’s unmistakable.”

  “And Judith was the last person to arrive at Ceci’s. Judith arrived. Rita got quiet. And she got that look. And what I’ve realized is that Rita has heard all about Mac, and she’s seen his book here, but I never call him anything but Mac, and his last name is McCloud. Judith is the only person who calls him Bruce, and it’s all she ever calls him. Everyone else calls him Mac. And Judith’s last name is Esterhazy. I’ve probably mentioned Judith to her, but it’s a common first name. Rita had no reason to see a connection.”

  “I want you to try to remember exactly what Rita said.”

  “She said that the husband had sent the wife to therapy because the wife thought he was repeatedly unfaithful to her. He claimed she was imagining things. Rita said his infidelity was the wife’s truth. From the patient’s point of view, she was telling the truth. Something like that. And that her patient’s reality was the only reality that she, Rita, had available. The husband wouldn’t see Rita. Oh, one other thing. The wife had a dog, and Rita said that one issue was that the woman loved the dog more than she loved her husband.”

  “We could ask Rita to listen to us. And not say anything.”

  “Not now! Cheating and lying are the last things she needs to think about. I saw her for a second today. Steve, she looks as if she’s lost five pounds since Saturday. We just cannot put any pressure on her about anything. She trusted Artie. The only one of us who didn’t was you.”

  “Veterinary reflex. Nice guy. But if he’d been a dog, I’d’ve known to muzzle him before I got close.”

  “Well, I wish Rita had had the same intuition. And I wish we’d warned her.”

  “We went over that. It could’ve been some other guy.”

  “We were fooling ourselves. We wanted to be wrong.” One piece of seaweed-wrapped rice remained. “Do you want that?”

  “It’s yours. I got ice cream.”

  As he dished out Ben & Jerry’s, I asked, “So what does it mean? Mac sent Judith to therapy because she thought he was unfaithful. He told her she was imagining things. She told Rita she wasn’t. And then she stopped therapy.”

  “She knew. And then something convinced her she was wrong? Or she just didn’t like therapy. But, look, Holly, what we’re doing here is leaping to conclusions. One conclusion. Mac. That’s illogical.”

  “We’ve been over the murders. So has everyone else.”

  “One more time. All women. All killed in the evening. Not in the middle of the night. Killed at times when people go places or are on their way home. All killed right near where they lived. Or were staying. All except the first one owned dogs, and the dog or dogs were nearby. All except the first did some kind of work that had to do with dogs. All except the first were people you’d met. And Mac knew. Who else knew them?”

  “You met Elspeth. So did Judith and Ian, at the talk at the bookstore. If Mac and I knew all of them, except Laura Skipcliff, there are probably other people who did, too. Other dog writers. Vets. Dog trainers. Vet techs. Veterinary assistants. And so on.”

  “You see? The value of taking a fresh look. Techs. Assistants. Think about it. Laura Skipcliff doesn’t fit the pattern. Or doesn’t appear to. But someone else does. At your launch party. The woman who’d died?”

  “Nina Kerkel. But she died a natural death.”

  “She worked with Mac. Veterinary receptionist?”

  “Yes. I remember because Judith said that she was all too receptive. Yes! Judith was muttering about her. Venomously, too. And according to Ceci, who knows Greta Kerkel, her ex-husband’s mother, Nina Kerkel, was, quote, no better than she should’ve been, unquote. But Nina Kerkel wasn’t murdered.”

  “She died,” Steve said. “If you look at it systematically, Laura Skipcliff was the first victim, but Nina Kerkel was the first in the series.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The dog lover’s hymn: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” The melody ran through my head as I sat at a card table at the front of the mall bookstore on Tuesday evening. I obviously wasn’t walking, and I certainly wasn’t alone. With me were the two most fanatical fans any author could desire. One pressed his body against my left thigh, the other pressed hers against my right. The behavior was intimate, but when a signing draws only two attendees, the author welcomes almost any demonstration of high regard, even if, as in this case, the demonstrative individuals don’t buy her book. Gazing into the adoring eyes of my worshipful public, I realized that I should have brought Sammy the pup along, too. Sammy, having eaten several copies of 101 Ways to Cook Liver, knew it insid
e out, and if he’d disliked it to begin with, he’d hardly have gone back for second helpings. The dog writer’s hymn: “You’ll Never Sign Alone.”

  Mac had warned me about the signing and had himself declined the invitation on the grounds that no one would come. He had, however, advised me to accept. According to Mac, chain bookstores in downscale strip malls were always devoid of shoppers during a signing, but the autographed books did, in fact, sell once the downcast author had gone home. He’d said that such signings could be depressing, but that he knew the events coordinator at this place and that she’d probably keep me company. He’d ended by saying that I should do as I pleased about the invitation. Pleased wasn’t exactly how I felt at the moment, but it consoled me to observe that no one else’s books were selling, either. Indeed, the warm-blooded mammals in the store consisted of a clerk, the events coordinator, Rowdy, Kimi, and me. So much for never taking both dogs!

  I felt sorrier for the events coordinator, Irene, than I did for myself. I’d written the book and had it published. The reviews had been good. In other bookstores, people were buying it. But how was Irene supposed to coordinate a non-event that, as such, required no coordination?

  As it turned out, Irene evidently had considerable experience in meeting this challenge. She did so by getting out a second folding chair and sitting with us. She was a little, fined-boned woman in her mid or late fifties. Her short white hair flowed backward and upward from her delicate face. The pitch of her voice, too, headed upward as she spoke, and she had a habit of lifting her gaze to the ceiling,

  “It’s always like this,” she said, “and these days, women are afraid to leave home after dark. Or in daylight, for that matter, some women, anyway. A lot of our customers are women. They’ll buy the signed books later.”

  “It’s fine.” It was, too. As a dog writer living in Cambridge, I was chronically plagued by the awareness that my neighbors were writing academic articles about verb forms in Aramaic, recent economic shifts in Argentina, the existence of thermonuclear something-or-others, and the role of women in the American colonies, whereas I was yet again discoursing on the methodology of the reliable recall. The publication of 101 Ways to Cook Liver had made me feel slightly less marginal than I had before. But now, all of a sudden, I was doing a book signing to which no one had come. At last, I was undeniably a real author! Hurrah!