Shades of Grey

by Clea Simon

  ‘A grey long-hair, you say? Oh, she had a cat like that,’ she had heard her neighbor explaining. ‘Silky like a Persian, only without that ugly pushed-in face. She had to have it put down, poor girl. She was that upset – and her room-mate? He didn’t understand. He used to tease her.’

  The detective had looked over at her again at this point, his eyes narrowing under heavy black brows, and Dulcie didn’t think it was with sympathy. But she’d been at work whenever – it – had happened. Hadn’t she? Dulcie recalled her slow trudge up Suffolk Street and how she had paused when she’d seen that beautiful grey cat. She thought of the open door – and the spreading puddle around Tim’s body.

  Her teeth were chattering now, and the booze in the tea sloshed around in her belly. Huddling in the blanket, she turned toward the back of the sofa. If only she could stop thinking about that puddle, the darkness that had looked almost black on the dingy carpet. If only her stomach would settle down. Were the police still in her apartment upstairs? Had her landlord started to clean it? Helene had called the emergency number for her.

  ‘You’re paying rent on that place, child. And he sure has insurance to cover a new carpet!’ Dulcie shivered and pressed her head between the sofa cushions. Almost, she thought, she could hear a vacuum cleaner, or maybe one of those carpet shampoo machines, in the apartment above, the low hum coming through the ceiling and her protective cocoon of upholstery. Whirr, whirr . . . the sound was strangely relaxing, rhythmic and even. Whirr, whirr . . . just a little, she thought, like a cat’s purr; like when Mr Grey would jump up on the bed as she drifted into sleep. Whirr . . . whirr . . . and she was out.

  Three

  The funeral was a mistake. Dulcie had known that from the moment she’d walked into the chapel and realized that her long, black Indian skirt was completely wrong for the day, being neither tailored nor linen. She shouldn’t be here. She didn’t fit. She’d wanted to skip the whole thing, forget that Tim had ever happened, and spend the day curled up with her books. But Suze had insisted that she go.

  ‘You were his room-mate, Dulce. It’s only polite.’ Although Suze was a couple of hundred miles away, Dulcie could picture her room-mate clearly: tall and lean, her no-nonsense dark hair cut short and chic as well as cool. She’d said it was sweltering in DC, so she’d probably be wearing her old Harvard swim team T-shirt and shorts. ‘You’ve got to go.’

  ‘He’s not going to care, Suze.’ Dulcie settled in for a long comfort talk, stretching out her own shorter and significantly softer legs on to the sofa. ‘I mean, his family doesn’t know me from Eve.’ It was Friday. Dulcie was back in her own place by then. She’d rearranged the furniture in a desperate attempt to reclaim the space, and had dragged the sofa over toward the window so she wouldn’t have to see the spot where Tim had lain. Not that there was any actual spot by then. The stained brown carpet had been replaced with a strange green shag that looked like it belonged on the bottom of an aquarium. It was probably all that the landlord could get in a hurry, but Dulcie was grateful for the distraction. ‘Did I tell you about this new carpet?’

  ‘Three times, Dulcie, but I understand it’s weird. And, yeah, you’ve got to go. It doesn’t matter if his family acknowledges you. You were his room-mate. Besides, don’t you want the cops to think you’re mourning?’

  Dulcie had grunted. What did she care what the cops thought? They couldn’t suspect her, could they? She considered her toenails. Should she stick with the neon-blue polish? She had already changed the color twice. But her attempt to distract herself failed; Suze’s comment on protocol had hit home. That was the kind of thing she’d never learned, growing up in a series of cooperative yurts. Lucy – Dulcie never called her ‘Mom’ – had taught her about compost, sure. But Emily Post? No way. Coming to Cambridge from the social equivalent of Mars, Dulcie relied on Suze for anything approaching etiquette. A law student from a comparatively normal suburban upbringing, Suze could talk about social dos and don’ts with a bit of wry distance, but at least she knew what the rules were.

  ‘Wear something dark,’ she had said, and Dulcie wondered just how well her friend remembered how limited her wardrobe was. ‘Black’s really just for the family.’

  Once they’d signed off, Dulcie had gone through her closet, pushing aside both the budget-conscious rayon dresses that served for work and her favorite colorful cottons. Despite Suze’s warning, the skirt she’d settled on had seemed perfect; cascading black tiers and long enough so that she could get away with bare legs as the steamy heat of July continued. Paired with a black scoop-neck T-shirt, it looked summery as well as appropriate. She’d even been grateful, just a little, for an excuse to leave the apartment she’d once considered so homey. Until she walked into St Paul’s on the Hill, that is. The moment she had entered that bastion of high WASP worship, Dulcie had realized that once again she was the hippie’s kid; too messy, too casual, too . . . well, too Dulcie for this crowd.

  The cool, dim chapel could have been the staging area for a J. Crew photo shoot. People were mulling, there was no other word for it, in perfect refinement: their conversation soft, their appearances flawless; their hair not captive to the swelling humidity. Dulcie recognized a few of Tim’s drinking buddies, preppie-looking ex-jocks, their smooth tans almost hiding where they were beginning to develop double chins. Even with the extra poundage, they looked pedigreed, the show dogs to her stray cat. Short, rounded, with an unruly mop of brown curls that the sun had only lightened to copper, Dulcie tried to ignore the feeling that she didn’t fit, though the occasional cool glance directed at her didn’t help. In response, she turned away and scanned the rest of the crowd, hoping for anything like a friendly face.

  ‘Alana!’ Never before had she considered the tall blonde a welcome sight. But right now she was grateful to spy Tim’s girlfriend in the small cluster of equally wispy beauties who had gathered by the side of the chapel. At least the featherweight blonde in the navy linen sheath was someone she had met. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The perfect oval face that turned toward her could have come off the cover of a magazine, with flawless skin untouched by lines or worry and a rosebud mouth delicately tinted peach. Dulcie looked into her wide-set hazel eyes, rimmed with a touch of turquoise. Girls like her must know the secret to run-proof mascara. ‘How are you doing?’

  Alana blinked twice, so slowly that Dulcie could see her thoughts processing. Another girl glanced over.

  ‘I’m Dulcie – Tim’s room-mate?’ The perfectly shaped eyebrows arched a little higher. Dulcie turned to the rest of the group. ‘Tim’s subletting my room-mate’s room in my duplex,’ she explained. ‘He was, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Daisy. Thank you for coming.’ As if remembering her role, Alana’s pretty mouth pouted a bit. ‘I still can’t believe he’s gone. I keep waiting for him to text me.’

  ‘It must be awful. I’m so sorry. You must be devastated.’ The blonde blinked again at that, her smooth face blank with incomprehension. An image of a cow flashed across Dulcie’s mind, and immediately she could have kicked herself. The girl must be in shock. She should cut a grieving girlfriend some slack.

  ‘You’re the room-mate?’ One of Alana’s buddies turned to Dulcie. ‘You’re the one who found him?’ At that, they all perked up. Suddenly, she was interesting.

  ‘Uh, yeah. When I came home from work.’ A soft murmur, like the lowing of cattle, went up from the four friends, all blondes, except for one dark-haired beauty who probably styled herself as ‘exotic’. Dulcie felt weirder than ever, a ladybug about to be gobbled up from the grass. ‘It was pretty awful.’

  As if she had just realized that her friends’ attention had drifted, Alana suddenly sobbed. Immediately, the crew turned back toward her. The brunette shot Dulcie a look, lifting a dark-berry upper lip in a sneer. Clearly, this was all her fault. ‘Honey, are you going to be all right?’ Another of the friends put her arm around Alana’s perfectly tanned shoulder, turning her away from the offending sight of
Dulcie. Suddenly a tall man stepped over, his back wide enough to block Alana from Dulcie’s view.

  ‘Hey, babe, come with me. We’re all sitting over by the windows.’ The cooing increased, as he steered the blonde behind the pews and away from Dulcie. Her flock followed, hovering, and Dulcie found herself alone again. To top everything off, the black T-shirt was warmer than she’d remembered. She could feel sweat trickling down her back.

  Tim’s parents, his mother veiled, passed by and paused. Surely, they remembered her from the day they had moved their son in, supervising as some freelance dorm crew members had carried up his trunk, suitcases, and the guitars with their amps that he never seemed to play. Dulcie nodded, and Tim’s father nodded back. His mother just turned away. It was the skirt, she was certain.

  Everyone was taking a seat. Should she bolt? She wasn’t sure. The huddle of large boys – she recognized at least one of them, a burly dude called Chuck, as one of Tim’s B-school buddies – were looking her way. There was something wolflike about them – maybe it was all those big, perfect teeth – and she was acutely aware of being a woman alone. She looked down at her T-shirt, trying to pull at it so that it didn’t stick quite so closely to her ample curves.

  That’s when she noticed the hair. About three inches long, silvery grey against the black cotton, it could only have come from one place, from one beloved pet. Had she not worn this shirt since Mr Grey had died? She plucked off the hair and smiled, twirling it in her fingers. She wasn’t alone, not really, and with that encouraging thought, Dulcie slid into the second-to-last pew, next to another lone female. Dulcie saw that her neighbor had had the sense to wear dark blue. In truth her outfit seemed to fit her no better than Dulcie’s. But while Dulcie’s overdyed black T was now clinging uncomfortably, this stranger’s jacket hung on her slim shoulders like a shower curtain. From the slight sheen, visible even in the dull church light, Dulcie figured it for polyester. It must have felt like hot plastic in this heat.

  ‘We must be the pew of fashion misfits,’ Dulcie muttered to herself, and thought of making a joke of it to her seatmate when she noticed the girl was crying. Although her dark hair hung over her face, Dulcie recognized the shaking of her shoulders as genuine, and when a small honk emerged from under an unfashionable cascade of curls, Dulcie passed her a tissue. The face that looked up was red and blotchy. ‘Thanks,’ the girl mouthed silently. Dulcie smiled and nodded. At least someone here seemed to be truly mourning the dead man.

  Who was this crying girl? That quick glance under the hair had shown a face devoid of make-up, though that could have been the result of the tears. Taking in the ersatz clothes, the untamed hair, and the apparently real grief, Dulcie felt a kinship and decided to speak. But just then a white-haired gentleman who looked like TV’s perfect Dad from central casting began to talk, so Dulcie tucked her feet under the pew and tried to listen. When another couple of late arrivals, a heavy-set woman and a tall, skinny man, squeezed by to slide into the pew, she spared them a glance. They both nodded to Dulcie and turned to face the front. For a moment, she felt better. The woman’s suit was wool. It had to be scratchy and even Dulcie knew it was at least five years out of date. The man’s tie looked clean enough, but the neck it rode up on was already red. She wasn’t the worst-dressed person here, even if she looked awkward enough for these latecomers to feel comfortable taking seats right next to her.

  The white-haired minister had begun to drone, and suddenly it hit her: there was a very good reason the odd couple were so poorly dressed, just as there was a very good reason why they had moved into her pew. Dulcie sat up straighter as a cold chill ran down her back. They were cops.

  Was it just protocol that had drawn them here, or were they looking for her? A shudder ran through Dulcie as she thought back to the evening, four days ago now, when she had found Tim. ‘We might want to talk again,’ one young cop had told her. He’d given her his card, too, ‘in case you remember anything.’ What else was there to remember? She’d come home, Tim had been . . . well, no sense in going over that again.

  Speaking of which, where was the body? Dulcie hadn’t been to many funerals, but shouldn’t there be a casket somewhere? She looked around, trying not to be too obvious. No, there was no casket. Perhaps it would have been considered gauche. No matter, Tim’s death had been real enough for her. She closed her eyes for a moment as that weird dizziness hit her again, and when she reopened them, everyone around her was standing. Dulcie scrambled to her feet. Was the service over? No, they were all muttering some sort of prayer. For a moment, Dulcie’s mind flashed back to the commune. Lucy never stuck with any one religion for long, but Dulcie had been to her share of prayer meetings and Wiccan circles. Her mother had even, for a while, gone regularly to a sky-clad outdoor service that Dulcie, then eleven and extremely self-conscious, had refused point-blank to return to, once she realized that all of her mom’s friends would happily strip as soon as they entered their sacred grove. At any rate, her mother’s spiritual quests had taught Dulcie how to blend in, and now she dutifully bent her head.

  ‘We commend you. Amen.’ Ten minutes later, the silver-topped speaker seemed to be done, and Dulcie looked around. No, nobody was kissing anyone else, but that seemed to be it. The two cops shuffled past her, and Dulcie looked to stall a moment.

  ‘Hi, I’m Dulcie.’ She turned to the curly-haired girl to her left. The eyes that looked up at her were a striking green, set against light-brown skin. The girl was stunning; exotic-looking, but with a wide-eyed innocence. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Thank you.’ A slight accent, nothing Dulcie could place, gave a sing-song lilt to her words. ‘I just – I hate these things.’

  ‘Me, too.’ Dulcie smiled, despite the setting, and when the girl smiled back, Dulcie was struck again by her beauty – and her age. She couldn’t be more than sixteen. But when she stood up, Dulcie found herself facing a body like a porn star’s. OK, maybe she was eighteen. And after a moment of staring, Dulcie got up too, turning sideways to exit the pew.

  The mismatched pair of latecomers were standing by the aisle, and she stepped past them.

  ‘Miss Estrella? Luisa Estrella?’ Dulcie looked back and saw that the duo had stopped the buxom girl.

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘We have some questions for you, Miss Estrella.’ The large woman reached to take the girl’s arm. ‘Would you accompany us out to our car, please?’

  ‘But she’s the only one who’s crying.’ The phrase formed on Dulcie’s lips, but she let it drop. What did she know? Instead, she stepped back and let the cops escort the curly-haired beauty out of the chapel. Around her, the buzz grew louder, and she glanced toward the front of the chapel. Everyone was looking at the doors, where the young woman was framed between the two larger cops as they disappeared into the sun. Some of the men frankly leered. Alana, dry-eyed and still perfectly composed, was among the watchers. Dulcie couldn’t be sure, but she thought that the girlfriend’s beautiful face looked ugly for a moment, frozen in a stare of pure hate.

  Four

  Dulcie hadn’t drunk at all after the funeral; hadn’t been invited back to wherever the Worthington clan had gathered, and hadn’t regretted the opportunity to socialize further with his family, if truth be told. Still, she felt hung-over when the doorbell rang early the next morning. Part of that was lack of sleep. She’d stayed up late, reading; returning to a blighted castle in Umbria where a distraught heroine was holding out under siege. The nightmares hadn’t helped either. No matter how often she told herself that this was her apartment, her home, she couldn’t shake off the dreadful knowledge that someone had died here, violently.

  Damn Tim! He was a worse room-mate in death than he’d been in life. Why couldn’t Suze be here? Thoughts of her old friend had comforted her, and at around three a.m. she had been able to settle down a little, making herself a cup of sugar-free cocoa, using the mugs she and Suze had discovered together at a yard sale. Then fatigue had finally kicke
d in, and she had found herself thinking of her other former room-mate, the grey cat she had so loved. Maybe it was silly to imagine that she had seen him; that he had warned her to be careful. Maybe it was worse – crazy, unhinged – but she liked thinking of him, of his wise green eyes and warm presence. Maybe she had seen him, just maybe . . .

  Rousing herself from a dream in which Mr Grey had been curled, purring, on the end of her bed, Dulcie grabbed her threadbare chenille robe and looked around for her slippers. The doorbell rang again, and she gave up.

  ‘Coming!’ she yelled, and took her time descending the stairs from her bedroom and then from the apartment’s main floor back down to the front door. Who would come by first thing on a Sunday?

  A peek through the door’s peephole showed Tim’s square block of a face, complete with tow-blond head.

  Drawing in a quick breath, she opened the door before her brain had fully engaged.

  ‘Oh, hi. You must be Dulcie?’ Face to face, the man on her doorstep was taller and slimmer than Tim, his hair a little lighter and a little longer. But in her half-asleep state, the resemblance was still close enough to be unnerving. She tucked her robe a little tighter around herself and blinked up at him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m Luke, Tim’s brother.’

  She nodded, still not understanding, and stepped back to let the tall stranger in. Between the cops, the funeral director’s staff, and various concerned (or nosy) neighbors, she was getting used to this.