THE GODDAMNED VACUUM needed a new bag.
Sherry Kimball bent and shut it off, silently cursing her back, which was about to seize up in painful spasms, and the line of cracker crumbs that still remained on the carpet. She had told Charley not to eat in the living room, had even promised her a new book if she would start helping to keep the house clean, but then Carl had gone and eaten a bag of potato chips while watching football and she hadn’t felt like she could yell at Charley when she’d found her lying on her belly, reading a book about sharks or something and eating Ritz out of the box.
She knew she wouldn’t say anything. That was the thing with Charley: she understood things too well, she would see that she had been treated differently and she would get mad, or worse, she would look up at Sherry with those big, dark, accusing eyes and walk out of the room. Sherry hated it when Charley looked at her like that, as though she saw right through her, saw how much she loved Carl, saw how scared she was that he would go back to his ex-wife. She switched off the vacuum and unplugged it from the wall outlet.
The extra bags, for some reason she’d never understood, were kept in her mother’s room, at the bottom of the blanket chest. Sherry started up the stairs and then decided she’d take the vacuum upstairs while she was up there. She’d been avoiding it and this seemed like as good a time as any. She’d get the floors done at least. Changing the sheets would have to wait. There would be time for that later, after the funeral, after . . . after what?
It struck Sherry suddenly that she might wait for some day or moment that could never come. When Charley was born, she had held her and looked at her small hands and feet and waited for the instant in which she would feel, “I am a mother. She’s my daughter.” It had never come like that. Sometimes she looked at Charley and could barely believe she was related to her. And it wasn’t just because of her skin, because it was so dark, because she looked more like her father than like Sherry. It was something about that way Charley looked at her, as though she doubted her ability as a mother, as though she knew that half the time Sherry could barely get herself out of bed and off to work, much less get Charley to school in clothes that had been washed and that fit, more or less.
And then when they had come back to Vermont, her mother had seemed to know exactly what she felt. She and Charley had shown up one day, exhausted from the bus trip and Sherry had said, “Ma, I need to stay here awhile. Things didn’t work out in Boston.” That was all she’d said and to her mother’s credit, she’d never asked any more questions. She’d just made up a bed for Charley in Dwight’s old room and told Sherry that she’d heard they were looking for waitresses down at the diner. Sherry even thought she’d been happy about it, about having some company in the house after all that time.
Her mother’s bedroom was at the front of the house on the second floor, a large square room with peeling floral wallpaper that must have once been a bright red and pink but was now faded by sun and marked by yellow patches from when the roof leaked. When they were growing up, she and Dwight hadn’t ever been allowed in there, and the room still held a kind of power for her. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d been in here since she’d been back. It smelled exactly the way it had always smelled, the very walls perfumed with a mix of mothballs and old lavender drawer sachets.
She changed the bag and went to work with the vacuum’s floor attachment. It felt good to stretch her muscles, to breathe hard. She had done nothing but lie in bed or on the sofa for days.
She lifted the bedspread and pushed the vacuum under the bed, watching the dust kitties fly across the floor. When was the last time anyone had cleaned under here? Her mother had been an inconsistent housekeeper, fastidious about dishes and hygiene in the kitchen, unconcerned about dirt everywhere else. Sherry took the attachment off the hose and stuck the narrow end into the gap between the bed frame and the old mattress. She felt a satisfying rush of debris and dust up into the hose. Jesus, it was disgusting under here. She lifted the mattress and stuck the hose farther underneath. Almost smiling, she remembered finding a stack of girly magazines under her brother Dwight’s mattress once. She couldn’t remember why she’d gone under there, maybe looking for pot, or money. But she’d found a whole bunch of them and taken them. He’d never asked her about it, probably thought Ruth had found them. Poor dead Dwight. Everyone was dead now, except for her.
The vacuum suddenly gave a loud slurp and she heard the sound of it sucking against an object too big to fit up the hose. She shut it off, reached under the mattress and came up with a little blue book with a fake leather cover. It was a bankbook, the old fashioned kind that people hardly ever had anymore because of ATMs and all.
She sat down on the bed and opened it, seeing Charley’s name in her mother’s handwriting on the first page and a list of deposits. Jesus, that was a lot of money. For Charley’s college, it said. Think of it, the old bat saving up all that money and never letting on. Where had she gotten it from? Her social security and her pension from the insurance office didn’t come to more than $800 a month.
Sherry went to put the book in the pocket of her jeans, then thought better of it. If Carl found out about it, he’d say they needed it for something. No, she decided, replacing it under the mattress. She’d leave it here. Charley probably knew where it was. Charley would know what to do with it.
FOURTEEN
Every day had the same shape to it at Byzantium. In the summers, most of the colonists rose early to work and the day lasted until about three o’clock, when visiting hours would begin. Visits might be arranged the day before or they could be more spontaneous, but they never occurred before three. It was unthinkable to interrupt someone when they might be working and new arrivals learned quickly the ramifications of a too-early visit.
Colonists and their guests would get into the carriage—later the new fangled motor cars—and begin the tour, down what was then called the River Road, now Route 20.
Riva Delaney, the first wife of the sculptor Paul Evans, who came to Byzantium in 1887 as one of Morgan’s students, said near the end of her life that she loved the afternoons of visiting: “Time stood still. All that mattered was the visit. Usually, we talked about the work. Hosts might show off what they were working on, if they were at a point where they could do that. Otherwise, they answered vaguely when you asked how it was going. That was the thing about Byzantium. No one pressed you. Everyone understood how it was to be an artist.”
Visiting bled into the cocktail hour, which started at four or five. Cocktails happened in the gardens of the houses when the weather was nice and in the parlors when it wasn’t.
And then there was dinner. There were dinner parties at Byzantium Wednesday through Saturday. Dress was as formal as one could manage away from the city and while they ate freshly killed meat and just-picked garden produce, the artists complained about the quality of the help, reminding themselves that there were some things you just couldn’t get in the country.
—Muse of the Hills: The Byzantium Colony, 1860–1956,
BY BENNETT DAMMERS
“HE WAS SO SUSPICIOUS,” Willow Fontana said, holding her wineglass at the level of her face so that the light cast by the chandelier in the Wentworths’ living room made it look like a cup full of rubies. “It was like he thought I’d killed her. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t know anything about her death while Billy Van Dorn, dressed up in his goddamn policeman’s uniform, pretended he’d never met me before and sat there gloating and writing it all down.”
“I was downtown today and I kept getting these looks,” Sabina told them. “At the Food Basket, Anne Salvo came over to tell me that she was ‘sorry for our trouble.’ Sorry for our trouble! Can you imagine?”
“It’s so hard to know what to do,” Britta said quietly. “I feel as though we shouldn’t be eating, shouldn’t be talking or enjoying ourselves. Yet we hardly have a right to be playing the grief-stricken mourners. It doesn’t seem healthy somehow. Does an
ybody know what I mean?”
“Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy of the living,” said Sweeney. Everyone in the room looked up at her.
Toby grinned. “Very good. All’s Well That Ends Well?” It was one of their favorite games.
“I know what you mean,” said Patch. “I feel guilty for not being more broken up about it.”
“She was our neighbor,” Anders Fontana said, gulping his whiskey and soda, “but we can hardly be expected to prostrate ourselves with grief. I mean, let’s be honest, she wasn’t exactly a friend.” He looked around at them. But there was only an embarrassed silence. Sweeney watched their sheepish eyes dart back to their drinks. He had gone too far.
“Darling,” Willow said quietly.
She was like a woman from a Hemingway novel, Sweeney thought, watching her from across the room. Her raspy voice conjured up old black-and-white movies, and her almost boyish face, with its strong, determined jaw and high cheekbones, made her, if not pretty, immensely sexy. Already, in the course of a ten minute conversation, she had revealed to Sweeney that she loved “shooting animals with horns” and that she went to Montana three times a year for the fly fishing.
The Wentworth children had been quiet so far, sipping sodas and listening to the adults’ conversation, but Gwinny, dressed in a pink satin floor-length skirt and vintage organza blouse, flushed now and put her drink down on a side table. “She was my friend,” she said angrily, looking right at Anders. “I knew her. I used to babysit for her.”
No one had anything to say to that. Anders directed his gaze away from Gwinny’s determined face.
Britta put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “He didn’t mean anything, sweetheart. Why don’t you go upstairs and change into something more appropriate.” Gwinny looked at Anders again, then turned to go out of the room.
“I thought Chief Cooper seemed a bit out of his league,” said Rosemary, who had come dressed in a black leather blazer and well-fitting red velvet pants, looking more New York than Vermont. “And I like Gwinny’s outfit. She looks like Grace Kelly.”
Electra Granger, serene in a blue wool suit and silk scarf printed with Monet’s water lilies, put up a hand and said, “We have to remember that Chief Cooper is just doing his job. He may just be pinpointing when she killed herself, the poor woman. He’s a very sharp man. I’m sure he’ll conclude that it was a terribly sad case of suicide.”
“You know what they say about Cooper,” Sabina said with a raise of her eyebrows. “He had some big job down in Boston—homicide or something—but he couldn’t stay off the sauce. That’s why he got sent up to us in the hinterlands.” She looked magnificent, her large frame costumed in a voluminous peacock blue silk caftan.
“If it wasn’t suicide,” Willow said, “I bet it had something to do with these burglaries. Maybe she caught Carl at it and he had to do away with her.”
Electra Granger held up her hand again. “Please,” she said. “I don’t like this kind of talk about our neighbors.”
There was an awkward silence before conversations struck up around the room again.
“Now, I want to know all about what you think of us, Miss St. George.” Sabina turned her gaze on Sweeney, who felt as though she were being devoured. “Have you ever been to an art colony before?”
“Oh, leave her alone, Sabina,” Willow said. “Sweeney, it’s nothing personal. You’re just the feminine addition du jour. Now, Ian, tell me again what you do for a living. Furniture, Patch said . . .” Willow leaned toward him, dangling her wineglass flirtatiously.
“How is your gravestone project going, Sweeney?” Sabina asked.
“It’s gotten off to a slow start, what with the . . . with all the excitement,” Sweeney said hesitantly, looking around to see who was listening. “I’m afraid I haven’t found out much about who the sculptor could be.”
“Well, if you’re interested, I’ve got all kinds of art related to the colony. Besides, I’d love for you to see my house.”
“That would be great. I’ve gotten really interested in the colony.”
“Wonderful. Why don’t you come over for lunch. Shall we say tomorrow? Electra, why don’t you come, too? Assuming we haven’t all been sent to jail.”
They decided on eleven o’clock.
Electra Granger turned her sightless eyes on Sweeney. “You must think our lives here are terribly dramatic, dear. But you should know that it isn’t every day we have suspicious suicides and burglary rings.”
Sweeney murmured that of course it wasn’t.
“Is it true you and Rosemary were the last ones to see her?” Sabina asked Electra. “Or is that just gossip?”
“No, it’s true,” Rosemary said stiffly. “We told Chief Cooper all about it. We had gone out for a walk and we were starting back because the weather had gotten so bad. We saw Mrs. Kimball as she was heading toward the cemetery.”
“But did you stop to talk?”
“No,” Electra said. “I keep thinking that if we had called her back, stopped to talk or something, she might not have done it. But I suppose you can’t think that way.”
WHEN BRITTA ANNOUNCED that it was time for dinner and the group moved to the dining room, Sweeney felt as though she’d stepped into a production of the Nutcracker Suite.
Tiny white lights cascaded along the walls and the long table had been set to resemble a medieval banquet hall, with wreaths of evergreen boughs studded with pomegranates for centerpieces and goblets the size of small mixing bowls, filled with crimson wine that matched the velvet tablecloth. It was lovely, but slightly creepy, too, a little Martha-Stewart-gone-awry for Sweeney’s taste.
She sat down at the place headed by a little red card with her name on it and a middle-aged woman in a black-and-white uniform who helped Britta with dinner parties came out with plates of rare rack of lamb, decorated with sprigs of mint and accompanied by pecanstudded rice pilaf and asparagus. Each place setting was topped by a small bowl of mint sauce.
The effect was lovely, but struck her as somehow obscene. Sweeney was of the decided opinion that vegetarians had been put on the earth merely to vex her. She loved rare lamb. But as she sat down before the bloody meat, she felt a wave of nausea roll in her stomach.
“In any case,” Anders said after they’d all begun to eat. “It solves our little problem about the condos, doesn’t it?”
“Anders!” His wife gave him a look that was part horror and part admiration.
“You know,” Patch said. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Now that Ruth’s gone, Sherry can do whatever she wants. And if Carl gets his hooks into her, anything could happen.”
“That’s true,” Patch said. “The sky’s the limit. An amusement park, maybe? How about a casino?”
“It isn’t something to laugh about,” Britta snapped. “Someone’s dead.”
“But it isn’t our fault, Britta. We didn’t kill her.” Willow’s eyes were cold and full of challenge. Sweeney looked quickly from her to Britta and back again. There was something there, a barely concealed hostility she hadn’t noticed before.
Anders took a long swig of his wine and looked around at them. The room was very quiet. “Maybe one of us did kill her.”
“Anders!” Britta gave him a stern look.
Suddenly everyone glanced down at where the children were, Trip and Gally, quiet, Gwinny still in her flamboyant outfit, with a sweatshirt over the blouse.
“That’s nonsense,” Sabina said quickly. “But if she was murdered, I suspect it was something very commonplace. She caught the burglar. She slighted someone in town.” She pronounced the words “in town” with a slight emphasis, as if to say that the colony and the town were two different things.
“If that’s all it takes to commit murder, any one of us might have killed her, even you, Sabina,” Willow said.
Sabina looked embarrassed. “But if I had killed her, I would have been smart enough to arrange an alibi. Isn’t that what peop
le do? As it is, I was all alone that afternoon. No one can vouch for me.”
“Me either,” Anders said happily. “I had gone for a run. All by myself. What about you, Patch?”
Patch glanced down at his plate. “Guilty as charged,” he said. “I was stacking wood out back. Then I went for a run, too.”
“You all sound as though you wouldn’t think it was wrong if one of us had killed her,” Rosemary said, looking shocked. “Surely murder’s wrong whatever the reason or method.”
“I don’t know,” Anders said. “Say one of us had killed her because of the condos. To preserve the colony. Wouldn’t that be worth it?”
Toby’s eyes lit up. “What’s one life up against the preservation of the colony, you mean. It’s a good question. Is the colony a historical and cultural resource so worth defending that even murder would be justified?” He loved these kinds of circular philosophical considerations.
“Of course not,” Britta said. “Murder is never justified.”
“It is in time of war,” Toby said. “In order to defend a way of life or a political ideal. A number of times over the past century we’ve made the decision that we were justified in killing to protect some vaguely defined ideal of democracy. Why is it wrong to kill for an artistic ideal?”
“And is it any artistic ideal? Or would you think some more worthy of defense than others?” Ian asked, grinning. “For example, is impressionism justification for homicide, but not Dadaism?”
“Please,” Britta said in a slightly desperate voice, as the hired waitress came in to clear the table. Patch turned the conversation to the weather and how the skiing had been and Sweeney was confused until the woman went out of the room again and Britta said, “I hope she didn’t hear us. She’s friends with Sherry Kimball, you know.”
“I’m sure she didn’t,” Patch said. “She was in the kitchen. You worry too much, Brit.” He looked around at his guests, grinning broadly.
O’ artful death Page 11
