Skeleton Key

by Jane Haddam

  “I don’t want to push you around,” Faye said, automatically, but the thought came to her that this possibly wasn’t true. It would be a great deal of help if she could push Zara Anne around, at least to the extent of getting her to move a little. Sweep the floor. Remember to pick up her clothes instead of leaving them where they fell as she took them off, even if they fell in the middle of the upstairs hall, because she took them off on the way to the shower.

  Zara Anne had drifted off again, her mind on the television set or the air or wherever. “You can’t push me around,” she said again, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  Faye looked at the set and saw Ann Nyberg on News Channel Eight, tapping papers together on the anchor desk. The graphic behind her said CHILD ABUSE, but there was no way beyond that to tell what the story was about.

  Faye left Zara Anne to it and went through the living room to the little back hall. She went down the back hall to the kitchen, where the dinner dishes were still piled in the sink and three dirty coffee mugs were standing out on the counter. She began to put things away automatically, at the same time she was filling the kettle and putting it on to boil.

  It was time she rethought her life, all of her life, from beginning to end. Lesbian or not, New Age or not, she was behaving just like a man with the way she chose her lovers. Maybe she was behaving worse than a man, because no man would have chosen Zara Anne out of the dozens of women wandering around the Hartford Civic Center that afternoon. No man would put up with Zara Anne’s wild clothes, or her Depression-era Okie thinness, or her stupidity.

  The kettle whistled and Faye took it off the stove. She started to put a Red Zinger tea bag into her favorite mug and then opted out. Red Rose would be better. She could use all the caffeine she could get.

  She left the tea to steep on the counter and went out the back door to stand on the little porch there. Through the small back windows, she could see the lights she had left shining in the garage, and the hulk of her Escort. She could see the empty space where the Jeep had been, too. Obviously, Zara Anne wasn’t the only thing in her life that was out of control.

  If there was one thing Faye Dallmer couldn’t stand, it was being out of control. She had been that way once, when she was very young. She didn’t intend to be that way for any length of time again. Not even by accident.

  5

  It was fifteen minutes after eleven, and Sally Martindale was having a hard time keeping her stomach under control. It had been bad enough when she was still out on Interstate 84, with wide empty roads and good road lights and nothing to be afraid of except the existential kinds of things that had plagued her, endlessly, ever since Frank had moved back to New York. Losing Frank and getting fired all at once—it was exactly the kind of double whammy Sally had always been suspicious of when it happened to other people. Surely there must have been something they’d done. Surely it couldn’t be plain old innocent bad luck. Now that it had happened to her, she hadn’t the first idea of what to do. Tonight she had simply driven out to Ledyard, where the Mashentucket Pequots had their gambling casino, and used her last two hundred dollars to give the slots a shot She had kept back fifteen dollars for a full tank of gas, which was a good thing. The slots had been absolutely dead for her all night, the way the rest of her luck had been dead for her for almost two years. It was amazing how luck always seemed to travel in packs. It was even more amazing just how long a string of bad luck could go on, without even taking a break for air.

  Right now, she was driving under the dark cover of the trees on Swamp Tree Road, heading for the main lodge of the Swamp Tree Country Club. She thought she ought to know this road by heart by now, since she drove it every morning of her life. Doing the books for the Swamp Tree was the only job she had been able to get after she had been fired from Deloitte, Touche in New York. At the time she had been offered it, she had been glad to get in, in spite of the fact that it was part-time and didn’t come with benefits. It was only that she realized what an impossible position she was in: still a member of the club, still cheerfully intending to bring her daughter out at the Swamp Tree’s Midnight Cotillion, and so short of cash that she was afraid to go to the doctor when she got a little sick. She hadn’t been to a dentist for over eighteen months.

  Sally looked across at her daughter, Mallory, sitting in the other bucket seat, her hands folded in her lap, her mouth set. Mallory had always been heavy, but since Frank left she had literally ballooned. The dress she was wearing now had to be at least a size twenty-four. It wasn’t only the size, either. Mallory had changed in every way it was possible to change. Frank was willing to pay for her college tuition, but Mallory wasn’t willing to take it—in spite of the fact that she’d fantasized forever about going to Smith, and had even gotten accepted. These days Mallory was in a nursing program at the University of Connecticut branch campus in Waterbury. She drove into class every morning just before Sally went to work, except on weekends. On weekends Mallory went to the club and sat at the big circular tables in the main dining room with all the other girls, acting as if nothing had happened. It was all wrong, Sally thought, all wrong, everything that had happened to them. Things like this were supposed to happen to other people, who deserved them.

  The road dipped and swayed. Up ahead, Sally suddenly saw the lights she had been looking for, winking like fairy auras in the blackness. She relaxed a little, but only as much as she thought she could afford.

  “Well,” she said, “we’re practically there. I thought I’d gotten lost for a moment.”

  “You took the right road,” Mallory said. “I saw you do it.”

  “I know I did. It didn’t look familiar. Maybe I’m not used to being out here so late.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve done this before,” Mallory said. “I can’t believe it. What are you going to do if they catch you at it? What am I going to do if they put you in jail?”

  “We’ve got to eat,” Sally said. “We can’t go on keeping the thermostat at sixty-eight all through the winter. We can’t live on the cranberries I grow in the backyard.”

  “We could sell the house and move someplace smaller.”

  “It would take forever to sell the house.”

  “If we moved someplace small enough, you could take the extra money from the house and use that to help us live on. We could quit the club. We could give up on my being a debutante. Lots of people live on less money than you’re making now. I’ve met them.”

  “I don’t want to live on less money than I’m making now,” Sally said.

  Mallory turned her head away, so that she was looking out the window on her side, into the dark. “It’s like a disease you have,” she said. “It’s like you think there’s some kind of cosmic meaning to all this stuff. It doesn’t have anything to do with life.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about life,” Sally said, feeling suddenly furious—but she had to tone it down. The lights were right ahead of her now. She could see the two low stone pillars that marked the entrance to the club. She could see the gravel drive winding up the hill right to the lodge itself.

  “Here we are,” she said, making the car turn slowly. She didn’t want to end up in a ditch with all this ice on the road. “When we get there you can go into the dining room and see who’s around that you know.”

  “I don’t want to see who’s around that I know. I don’t like the people I know. Not at this place.”

  “Even your father understands the need for contacts, Mallory. These are the best contacts you’re ever going to have, unless you come to your senses and let your father put you into college next fall.”

  “Contacts for what?”

  “Contacts,” Sally said stubbornly. “You really have no idea how the world works. No idea. I wish I could get you to see what you’re trying to get me to give up on and throw away.”

  “I wish you could see what I see.”

  “You’re romanticizing poverty. That’s all you’re doing. It’s very common in adole
scents who’ve never had to fend for themselves.”

  “You’re romanticizing money.”

  They had reached the wide gravel parking lot. This was a weekend night in the country. The lot was more than half-full. Sally put the car into a space at the back, being careful not to hit either of the two Volvos that surrounded her. Her own car was a Volvo, too, because it had been bought before Frank left them. If she’d had to buy a car of her own these days, she wouldn’t have been able to afford anything expensive, because she wouldn’t have been able to get the credit.

  She pulled the key out of the ignition and dropped it into her purse. “I don’t know what you’re going to do if you don’t go into the main dining room,” she said. “You’d look much too conspicuous if you came with me. And you can’t hide out in the ladies’ room for an hour.”

  “Maybe I can just go into the library and read.”

  “On Friday night?”

  “Some people do read on Friday night, Mother. Some people work, too. Some people even just stay home and don’t see anybody.”

  “This is the club on Friday night. You’ll look ridiculous. Sometimes I think you want to look ridiculous.”

  “Maybe I just want to look like myself. Or maybe I just don’t want to look like a debutante.”

  “Stay in the car for all I care,” Sally said, popping her door open and letting the wind rush in. “Stay out here and freeze. If I don’t do what I came here to do, we’re not going to eat next week.”

  She climbed out onto the gravel and slammed the car door shut behind her. It was freezing out here, not only late October but early frost. She had left her coat in the backseat of the car. She didn’t want to get it. Mallory was fumbling around in there, getting ready to come out. Sally didn’t want to talk to her again.

  Sally wrapped her arms around her chest and started across the lot, wobbling so violently on her high heels that she thought she was going to break an ankle. When she got to the lodge’s front door, she turned back and saw Mallory lumbering toward her, not wearing any kind of coat, either. Maybe with all that fat on her she doesn’t get cold, Sally thought—and then she was ashamed of herself, because that seemed spiteful.

  She turned away and let herself into the lodge. There was no one at all in the front lobby although Sally could see a few couples in the dining room beyond, and one or two of the girls in Mallory’s group. The girls were not the ones Sally most wanted Mallory to know—but then they wouldn’t be, since girls like that almost always had other things to do on weekend nights besides hang around at the club. That was true even if they were heavy and unattractive, like Mallory was. Money covered a multitude of sins. It was one of those things Mallory just didn’t understand.

  Sally bypassed the main rooms and went down to the back where the administrative offices were. Her own office was the second-biggest one on the corridor, after the club manager’s, SALLY MARTINDALE, FINANCIAL OFFICER the sign on her door read. Sally made a face at it. Of all the things she found it hard to take, this was what she found the hardest: that there was a sign on her door that announced, unequivocally, just how far she had come down in the world.

  She went into her office and turned on the lights. She punched at the keyboard of her computer and waited for it to boot up. Then she sat down in the little chair and punched at her keyboard some more, until she brought up the file she had to have to do what she wanted to do. It was only then that her fear came back to her, and it came back in a wave. Mallory thought she did this without a qualm, but it wasn’t true. Sometimes she lay awake in the night, imagining all the worst things happening to her, getting caught, going to jail, watching Mallory move to New York to live with Frank. Except, of course, that Frank wouldn’t take Mallory. The last thing Frank wanted was a fat, sullen, unattractive daughter hanging around the apartment letting all his perky little girlfriends know exactly how old he was.

  Sally scrolled up the page, looking for the names she liked the best. It was not a good idea to take money out of the same accounts two weeks in a row, even small sums of money, like one or two hundred dollars, which was all Sally ever took. She didn’t want to turn into a real-life embezzler. She just wanted enough to get by, to keep the phone and the gas on, to make sure she didn’t have too many calls from the people she had her credit cards with, wondering where their money was going to come from this month. In the past six months, Sally had been threatened with law suits twice, both by out-of-town banks where she had Visa cards. When she and Frank had been together and she had been working for Deloitte, it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to run up huge balances and pay them off only sporadically. It had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to drop a thousand dollars in a single afternoon at the West Farms Mall, just because she was bored.

  The problem was, not every member of the club kept significant amounts of money in their club account. Sally couldn’t always alter the list of people she was taking fifty dollars from here and twenty-five dollars from there. She kept coming back to the same names over and over and over again, and that was dangerous.

  Actually, if she was honest about it, she kept coming back to the same name over and over again—name singular, not plural. She looked down at the screen and bit her lip.

  “Anson, Kayla,” it said, the letters pulsing a little on their dark blue background. Kayla’s club account had over fifteen hundred dollars in it. It was the largest of any account kept at the club. Even other very rich women, like Penny Harrison or Dee Marie Colt, rarely kept more than a couple of hundred on account at any one time.

  Sally punched at her keyboard again. Kayla Anson’s fifteen hundred dollars became thirteen hundred dollars. Sally punched at her keyboard again and Kayla’s name disappeared. All Sally had to do now was wait for the morning, when she picked up the club’s weekend cash at the bank. She could take the two hundred dollars off the top right in the car. All anybody would know if they checked was that Kayla Anson had spent two hundred dollars at the club on Friday, October 27, and that the spending had been done on food and liquor. The club was not supposed to serve liquor to minors, but it had been doing it for decades, and it wasn’t going to stop now.

  Sally exited the program and put her screen saver up. Then she stood and got her purse from the floor. Kayla Anson wasn’t in the club tonight. Her little BMW was not in the parking lot. As far as Sally knew, Kayla hadn’t been in the club all day. When Sally had first started doing this, she had been much more careful about making sure that the dates of her withdrawals matched the dates on which the account holders were really here. After a few months, it had been impossible to keep that up. It was incredible how fast money went, and how much there was to spend it on. It was incredible how completely broke a person could get and not be dead.

  Sally turned off the lights and went back into the hall. Nobody was around. The club manager went home on weekend evenings, in spite of the fact that they were often the busiest nights of the week. The very busiest night of the week was Thursday. That was the night the maids traditionally had off, and nobody wanted to stay home and cook.

  Sally went into the main lobby again and then through to the dining room. Mallory was sitting alone at a table near the kitchen door, reading a ragged copy of Field and Stream. At a table in the center of the room, three girls from Mallory’s coming-out class—including one Vanderbilt connection and a girl whose mother was related to Jacqueline Onassis on the Bouvier side—were huddled over gin and tonics, giggling.

  If Sally Martindale could have done anything at all right that minute, she would have strangled her daughter and thrown the body in the duck pond beyond the terrace. Maybe the ducks would be able to get through to Mallory where she could not. Maybe the ducks would come up with a reason why Sally should go on living.

  6

  It was almost 11:30 by the time Peter Greer got home, and he was tense as hell about it until he came through his garage and into the main room of his Adirondack-style house. That was when he h
eard the giggling coming from his sunroom, where the hot tub was—giggling that meant that Deirdre had waited for him after all, and gotten herself fairly drunk on champagne in the process. That was almost too perfect to believe: a drunk and naked Deirdre, in a good mood. Peter had been jumpy all night. It was impossible not to think of all the things that could go wrong if he didn’t keep an eye on his life every single moment. He had so many balls in the air right now, he wasn’t even juggling anymore. He was just flailing, pinwheeling his arms and living on hope. One of these days it was all going to come crashing down on his head, and then what was he going to do with himself?

  He went past the massive stone fireplace with its framed poster on the mantel: the cover of the first Goldenrod catalogue he had ever produced. He dropped his scarf and his down vest on a black leather love seat and kept moving toward the sunroom. Almost everything he owned had appeared in one Goldenrod catalogue or another over the years. When he really liked something, he tried to get a franchise to sell it. Goldenrod was all about his personal taste. No, that wasn’t it. It was all about his personal identity. Either that, or the kind of identity other people thought he had. Everybody was looking for an image these day. Everybody wanted to see themselves living out their lives on a big screen. Peter had no idea what people had done in other eras, when there hadn’t been so much media around, or so many opportunities to appear in public. He had always thought anonymity was a little like death, or maybe something worse. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it really make a sound? If a person lives a life that nobody else notices, was he ever really alive? The trick was to call as much attention to yourself as possible. That way you could be sure you wouldn’t just disappear.

  Peter ducked his head into the sunroom. Deirdre was lying in the hot water, letting her body float to the surface every once in a while and then forcing it back down. She really was naked. When Kayla came here—and Peter brought her here often; it was the most sensible thing he could do—she always wore a bathing suit.