Reaching past Steve, I rang the bell again. No one answered. Then I rapped impatiently, just as Claire Langceil had done. Feeling annoyed, I said, “Why would you summon a person on some urgent mission the day before her wedding, and then not answer the door?”
Steve replied to my question by trying the handle and then by opening the unlocked door. “Mac?” he called. “Judith?” His deep, strong voice reverberated in the spacious entryway. It seemed to descend the stairs to Mac’s office and to ascend to the first floor. “Mac? Judith? It’s Steve and Holly.” This time, he shouted. He must have been audible throughout the large house, even in the bedrooms and in Judith’s study on the top floor.
I’m not a reader of gothic novels, but I didn’t need to be one to have the vaguely unreal sense that we’d been cast as characters in some melodrama, or perhaps in a parody of one. Even so, I felt compelled to play my role. “Mac?” I called. “I’m here. Where are you? Judith, are you here?”
With no discussion, Steve and I simultaneously decided that enough time had elapsed to justify our actually entering the house. Also by unspoken agreement, we headed side by side up the stairs in search of Mac or Judith. The immense living room, with the fireplace at one end and the dining table at the other, was as tidy as it had been when we’d arrived for dinner. There was no fire. The ashes had been removed and the hearth cleaned. Except for a basket of yellow chrysanthemums, the table was bare. The kitchen, too, was neat and presentable, but it showed signs of use. The scent of coffee lingered, and a large skillet in the dish drainer was still damp. A few droplets of water were visible on the tile floor near a large blue pottery dish that had a blue floral motif and bore Uli’s name. The dish was half full of water.
Noticing a collection of message pads and a pen on a counter beneath a wall phone, I said in an undertone, “Maybe there’s a note.”
“Why leave a note there?” Steve asked sensibly. “Why not on the front door?” He, too, spoke very softly, as if we’d become intruders who wanted to avoid detection.
Still, I checked. The message pads were blank. As if compelled to search for proof that I was expected, I ran my eyes over the cabinets, counters, and appliances. The kitchen was remarkably uncluttered. The cooking utensils must have been in drawers or cupboards. A wall calendar with a photograph of a Bernese mountain dog hung near the phone, but there was no corkboard or message board.
“Nothing,” I said. Suddenly inspired, I called, “Uli! Uli, come! Here! Uli, here!”
We listened, but heard nothing.
“Probably with Judith,” Steve said.
A quick look in the other rooms on that floor revealed no one. The bathroom was obviously meant only for guests: Small lilac towels hung on a rack, and there were no bottles of shampoo, no tubes of toothpaste, no cosmetics. What seemed to be a guest room held a double bed, a dresser, and little else. Another room served as a pantry and storage area. With a sense of increasing alarm, I headed upstairs. Steve followed. Absurdly, we called out Mac’s and Judith’s names. When I reached the landing, I looked through the open door of Judith’s little study and then entered. In contrast to the rest of the house, the room was messy, but only in the manner of a writer’s workspace. A computer and printer sat on the desk, the surface of which was thick with paper. Yellow legal pads were piled on the floor. Books leaned lopsidedly against one another on shelves. Paper spilled from a wastebasket. Hurriedly, I led the way to Judith’s bedroom. The bed had been made. All the drawers were closed. I opened the door to the big closet. No one was in it. The other two bedrooms on the second floor had evidently once been the children’s. In one, framed photographs of stringed instruments suggested Ian. The other room had a flowered comforter and matching pillowcases. Neither room looked used.
“No one,” I said at normal volume. “Mac’s office is on the ground floor. I guess his bedroom is there, too. We probably should’ve looked there first.”
We both ran down the stairs to the first floor, then down to the entryway, where we paused to locate light switches and illuminate the stairs that led downward. Foolish though it was, we again called out for Mac and Judith.
This time, we heard a sound. It was difficult to identify. A soft groan? A sigh?
As I was about to go straight ahead toward Mac’s office, Steve unhesitatingly opened a door on the left. We stepped into a large bedroom with off-white walls and a full bed with a handwoven rust-colored spread neatly tucked in. On the far side of the bed was a nightstand with a pottery lamp, a stack of paperback books, an empty glass, and a prescription vial, the kind of plastic bottle used to dispense tablets and capsules. Its cap lay next to it. Sprawled face up on the floor at the foot of the bed was Mac McCloud. He wore a navy turtle-neck sweater over khaki pants, and he had shoes and socks on, expensive-looking white running shoes and thick ragg wool socks. His eyes were closed, and his face looked lifeless; despite the sound we’d heard, my first impression was of death. Steve, however, dropped to the floor next to Mac and felt for a pulse. I didn’t need to see Steve’s face to understand that he’d automatically shifted to his professional mode; the set of his shoulders alone conveyed absolute concentration and effortless efficiency. As he checked Mac’s mouth and jaw to make sure that Mac had an airway open, he said, “Go see what’s in that bottle on the nightstand. Don’t pick it up. Don’t touch it.”
“Steve, that's pointless. He’s obviously tried—”
“Just read the label. Don’t touch the bottle.”
I had to walk around Mac and Steve to reach the nightstand, and when I got to it, I had to bend down to make out the print. “Ace.” Needlessly, I added, “Acepromazine. The bottle is empty. The prescription is five years old. It was prescribed for Uli.”
“Find a phone. Call nine-one-one. Do you know the address here?”
“Yes.”
“Give them the address, the phone number, his age. Any medical history? Heart?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Tell them that he’s apparently ingested an unknown quantity of acepromazine. Stay calm. Speak slowly. Call right now.”
As I made my way back around Mac and Steve, Mac began to groan, and as I left the room, I heard him retch. In dogs, vomiting could mean a serious risk of aspiration. If there was anything Steve could do to minimize that risk, he’d do it. Adopting Steve’s calm manner, I suppressed the urge to dash frantically in search of a phone. Instead, I walked smoothly to Mac’s office, picked up the phone on his desk, dialed 911, and tried my best to give the crucial information as clearly as Steve would’ve done. “An unknown quantity of acepromazine,” I said. “The address is 89 Milford Street. The door will be open. There’s a flight of stairs on the left, going down. That’s where he is.”
Still cool, I went up the stairs to the front door, opened it, and left it open. Then I returned to Mac’s bedroom, which now reeked of vomit. Steve had moved Mac to the bed and was holding him so that he leaned over with his head between his knees. One sleeve of Mac’s turtleneck was spattered, and on the floor where Mac had lain was a mess that I’ll avoid describing.
“They’re on their way,” I said. “He waited until Judith left. He didn’t want her to be the one to find him. That’s what the message meant.”
“This isn’t suicide,” Steve said.
"Obviously not. He’s alive.” Even so, we spoke as if Mac weren’t there. Indeed, there was an absent quality about him. His eyes remained closed, and he hung heavy in Steve’s arms.
Steve shook his head. “Ace can be lethal. Suicides use it. But Mac had lots of other options that would’ve been quick and sure. Mac didn’t do this.”
“Then someone set it up. Someone staged it.” I thought for a moment. “To spare him a trial. And a jail sentence. Someone who loves him. Judith.”
“Unless it’s someone’s idea of justice. Maybe both at once. Execute him. And spare him.”
Another possibility came to me. Indeed, what came to me was the likely possibility, the one that would acco
unt for the presence of the empty bottle of acepromazine in a prominent place on the nightstand. I was about to say so when sirens interrupted me. The taxes in wealthy suburbs get spent, in part, on extraordinarily rapid emergency services. In what seemed like two seconds after the first scream of the first siren, I heard people in the entryway. Although I’d given directions about going down the stairs, I stepped out of the bedroom and pointed to its door. The first two EMTs descended and entered the room, and two others followed almost immediately with great quantities of medical paraphernalia. A uniformed police officer told me to get out of the way. At first, I lingered in the hallway outside the bedroom. I heard Steve say something about injection sites and about finding none. Then someone asked me to move. Still feeling weirdly like an intruder in the house, I went outdoors. In the driveway were an emergency medical van, a second emergency vehicle the size of a truck, and a police cruiser. The cops, Steve, and the EMTs, with Mac on a stretcher, all emerged from the house. Steve was walking right next to the stretcher, near Mac’s head, and speaking quietly to him, as he did with sick animals. Steve left Mac for only a moment to come to me and say, “I’m going along with Mac. He’s conscious. Go ahead and go to the beauty shop.”
“But what about Judith?”
“Let the police handle it. I’ve got to go.” He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed for just a second. “I love you, Holly. I’ll see you at Ceci and Althea’s. At five.” With that, he ran to his van and jumped in. Both medical vehicles drove off, the siren of the one transporting Mac already wailing. Steve followed.
I was left in the driveway with two cops, a young woman and a sad-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair and a lined face. “It’s worse when they shoot themselves,” he said to me.
"What?”
“It makes an awful mess. It’s hard on the families. This way’s ugly, but it’s easier. More considerate. But this one’s going to be all right. Lucky he lost his lunch, I guess.” He paused. “He got a wife? Kids?”
“A wife. The children are grown. They don’t live here.”
“You got any idea where the wife is?”
“No. I’m sorry. I have no idea.”
I expected the cops to return to the house. It was my understanding from Kevin Dennehy that the first officer on the scene had the obligation to decide whether a crime had occurred and to act accordingly. In this case, it seemed to me that the house should be declared a crime scene and appropriately sealed off. It also seemed to me that I should be questioned. Nothing of the kind occurred. All the officer asked me was whether he should close the front door or whether I’d do it. I said that I would. The cops got into the cruiser and drove off.
As promised, I went back to the entrance to Mac and Judith’s house. As promised, I closed the front door. I pulled it shut. From the inside.
CHAPTER 39
In scanning- the kitchen in search of a note from Mac, I had, as I’ve mentioned, seen a wall calendar with a photo of a Bernese mountain dog. My dog-loving eyes had centered on the handsome animal, who’d looked wonderfully like a young, healthy Uli. Only one other feature of the calendar had caught my eye, namely, a heart-shaped red sticker on the square for September 1; the little handwritten notes on other dates had barely registered on me. My own calendar had the same red hearts, reminders to give my dogs their monthly doses of Heartgard, a medication to prevent heart -worm disease, the packages of which contained sheets of red hearts to affix to calendars.
Now, alone in the house, I returned to the kitchen to reexamine the calendar. This time, I read the handwritten notations, all in the same writing: 4:00 dentist, 10:30 cut & color, and so forth. Color had to mean Judith; she used this calendar. In the square for the previous Saturday was Dinner here. Also noted in that square and in those for the other three Saturdays, including today, was 11:00 Sirius. Sirius is, of course, the dog star. The cryptic notation evidently referred to a regular Saturday morning appointment that had something to do with Uli. Opening the cabinets near the calendar and the phone, I soon found a telephone directory. In the business listings was Sirius Dog Grooming. I dialed the number.
A woman answered. “Sirius!” In the background, dryers roared. A dog barked.
I said that I was trying to reach Judith Esterhazy.
“Hang on! She’s around. Let me see... she’s drying Uli. JUDITH? Can you take a phone call?”
Judith’s voice was cool and unrevealing. “Hello? This is Judith.”
“Judith, it’s Holly Winter. I’m at your house. You need to come home.”
“I’m almost finished. What’s...?”
“You need to get home now. This is something we can’t talk about on the phone. Just come home.”
She said that it would take her fifteen minutes. I hung up. If I’d wanted to snoop, I could’ve done so before I’d placed the phone call. Far from feeling even the slightest impulse to poke through Mac’s and Judith’s possessions, I felt an urgent desire to get out of the house. My most acute sense, however, was of missing my dogs. I desperately longed for Rowdy’s strength, Kimi’s intensity, and Sammy’s contagious optimism. Cursing myself for having left them in Cambridge, I went outside, paced around, and eventually sat in my car, where I kept checking the time. Exactly eighteen minutes after I’d hung up the phone, Judith’s car appeared. When I groom my dogs, I end up damp, disheveled, and furry. When Judith got out of her car, I could see that her short hair was as sleek as ever. To take Uli to what was evidently a do-it-yourself grooming shop, she’d had the sense to wear jeans and a T-shirt, but her jeans were unfaded and unripped, and the T-shirt was bright raspberry with decorative stitching at the neckline and on the sleeves.
She didn’t smile at me, but gave a little nod and said, “Just let me get Uli out.”
Judith opened the rear passenger door of her car and then the door of a metal crate. Remembering the help Uli had needed with stairs, I moved next to Judith and, without asking, joined her in taking most of the dog’s weight as he climbed out. Once Uli was on the ground, he shook himself, wagged his tail, and eyed me happily. In the daylight, his old-age cataracts were plainly visible.
“I groom Uli every Saturday morning,” Judith said. “It’s a special arrangement I have with the shop. He’s too big for me to lift onto my own grooming table, and he hasn’t been able to jump up for a long time. We need the hydraulic table at the shop. And the people there are very kind about lifting him in and out of the tub.”
“Every week. That’s a lot.”
“He’s beginning to lose bladder control. These old-dog drugs do wonders, but they stop short of performing outright miracles.”
We were walking toward the house. When we reached the door, she said, “This is about Bruce, isn’t it? It is. Come in.” I’d closed the door, but left it unlocked. As if she knew exactly what I’d done, Judith didn’t insert a key, but simply opened the door. The entryway showed no sign of foot traffic; it was just as it had been when Steve and I arrived. Glancing to the left, Judith said, “Bruce isn’t here?”
I shook my head. Then Judith and I supported Uli as he slowly climbed up the stairs. Judith’s T-shirt exposed her arms. It would’ve been easy to believe that they belonged to a weightlifter who’d overdone liposuction and been left with nothing but skin, bone, and contrastingly massive muscle. “When there’s no one here to help,” said Judith, “I use a towel. But this is much easier. Uli likes the feel of hands. Coffee? Tea?”
“Tea would be good."
“Endless pots of sweet tea,” she said. “The British answer to any crisis. Soothes the nerves.”
My own nerves were beyond the powers of tea. Judith, however, was composed. As she ran water into a kettle, set it on the stove, got out a heavy blue-and-white teapot, and put cups, saucers, spoons, sugar, and cream on the kitchen table, her thin face remained calm, and her hands were steady. The only sign of strain I saw in her was the absence of body fat, sad evidence of chronic stress rather than the acute distress I was struggling to co
nceal. The water seemed to take an hour to reach a boil. While she waited to make tea, Judith picked up Uli’s big ceramic bowl of fresh-looking water, took the bowl to the sink, washed it, rinsed it thoroughly, refilled it, and replaced it on the floor. Then she coaxed Uli toward it and rested a hand on his back as he took a small drink. As soon as he’d done so, he looked up at Judith as if to assure himself that he’d pleased her.
When the tea was finally ready, Judith and I sat at the kitchen table. I was on one of the long sides, and Judith was to my right, at the head of the table. Uli seated himself on her left, between us, not in the manner of a dog who intends to beg at the table, but in the companionable way of a dog who simply wants to be with the one he loves. When Judith had poured my tea, I stirred in two teaspoonfuls of sugar and so much cream that the tea turned almost white.
I sipped, cleared my throat, and said, “I got an urgent E-mail message from Mac this morning. He asked me to come here immediately. His E-mail said that he needed a great and unpleasant favor that he couldn’t ask of his family. When I got here, no one answered the bell. The door was unlocked. I found Mac on the floor of the downstairs bedroom. He’d taken an overdose of ace. The empty bottle was on the nightstand.”
The hollows under Judith’s cheekbones deepened. Her full lips thinned. Her face and body were rigid.
“I called nine-one-one,” I continued. “Two ambulances came. When everyone left, I checked your calendar over there by the phone. And then I looked in the phone book for Sirius. I didn’t want you to have to come home and...”
“Thank you.” Judith brought her mug of tea to her mouth, but seemed to drink nothing. “Kindness always surprises me, somehow. I’ve had so much of the opposite. It’s a blessing, really, a grace, if you will, that I still know kindness when I see it. And you are kind. In return, I think you’re owed an explanation. I’m tempted to slip into triteness and say that I’ve been worried sick about Bruce, but it’s not true. What I’ve been, really, is worried thin. I saw a therapist this summer. For only a few sessions. But she gave me courage.”
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