Body Language

by Michael Craft

  “Hardly!” She crossed her arms, clattering her bones. “Only days before your arrival in Dumont, Mr. Manning, Suzanne made the fatal mistake of telling Hazel about the generous terms of her will. I visited Suzanne at her home that day to pursue the issue of Ariel’s guardianship. But Suzanne was preoccupied. She recounted the discussion she had just finished with Hazel, and she was concerned about the effect that the news had had on her. To hear Suzanne tell it, and these were her exact words, ‘Hazel waltzed out of here with dollar signs in her eyes.’”

  Again there was a pause as Miriam’s words sank in. “That’s very… interesting,” I told her, glancing sideways toward Pierce, not at all sure that I believed the woman, in spite of the fact that her story worked to my advantage.

  Pierce said, “Thank you, Miriam. We’ll try to work with this.”

  She rose, straightening the folds of her tunic. “I’m sure you will,” she said vaguely to both of us. Whisking up her cape, she crossed to the door and opened it. Framed by the doorway leading to the hall, she told me, “The Feminist Society for the New Age of Cosmological Holism will break ground for its new school come spring. My son Ariel will be among its charter enrollees. Don’t try to stop me, Mr. Manning.” She smiled. “I’ll see myself out.”

  She turned on her heel and, in the swirl of her cape, disappeared through the front door, which closed behind her with a sturdy thud. It was as if she had vanished into thin air, and I would not have been surprised to hear her cackle. Instead, I heard the knock of her clogs crossing the porch toward the street.

  I arched my brows, blew a silent whistle, and suggested with a jerk of my head that Pierce should join me at the desk—somehow, I felt, it would be easier to focus our discussion there. He rose from his chair near the fireplace and sat at my uncle Edwin’s partners desk, as he had done when we first met on Christmas morning. Seating myself opposite him, we again faced each other over the blotter.

  “What do you make of her story?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “It’s her word against Hazel’s. The only person who could corroborate Miriam’s story is Suzanne—who is now conveniently indisposed.”

  “Do you think Miriam is simply getting back at Hazel for accusing her of being at the house at the time Suzanne was murdered? Hazel’s wacky fruitcake story is similar to the story Miriam just told us—it’s one woman’s word against the other’s.”

  “Hey,” said Pierce with a snap of his fingers, “we should ask Hazel to show us the ‘organic fruitcake.’ I wouldn’t quite classify it as hard evidence, but it would at least lend some support to her story.”

  I shook my head. “I thought of that last night and talked to her about it. She called the fruitcake ‘loathsome pagan garbage.’ She threw it out with the rest of the trash on Christmas. It was picked up and hauled away yesterday. If, in fact, there was a fruitcake, I think we’d have a hard time identifying it at the dump among the thousands of others that were surely pitched last weekend.”

  We both laughed. It was hard to believe either woman’s story—they seemed equally implausible. Yet either one, if true, would get me off the hook with district attorney Kaiser, and I was in no position to dismiss blithely any accusations that worked to my advantage. This brought to mind something else:

  “Yesterday I overheard a quarrel,” I told Pierce, “between Hazel and Thad.”

  “Should I take notes?” he asked, reaching inside his jacket.

  “I think so,” I told him. “The argument was inconclusive, but maybe you can sort it out.” Then I told him what I had heard, eavesdropping outside the kitchen: Hazel essentially accused Thad of killing his own mother, and while Thad denied the murder, he did not deny that he had threatened Suzanne over issues relating to his rebellious desires for greater independence.

  Dotting his notes with a period, Pierce said, “That’s pretty juicy, but I think we’ll have to keep this angle in reserve for a while. I’ve told you before, Mark, that Harley Kaiser needs, politically, to avoid implicating a Quatrain in this case. What’s more, he could easily conclude that you fabricated the quarrel to save your own skin—and Hazel and Thad could easily deny that it ever occurred. From Kaiser’s perspective, your story would have no more credibility than Hazel’s tale of Miriam’s organic fruitcake.”

  “That’s heartening.” So I pursued the only other angle I had. “Any luck tracking down Thad’s father?”

  “We’ve begun a search to trace the whereabouts of Austin Reece, but it’s too early for results. Even if we find him, though, it’s a long shot that he had either the motive or the means to kill Suzanne.”

  Nodding, I asked, “So where does that leave us?” I answered my own question, summarizing, “We currently have five suspects, with Austin Reece as little more than a specious hunch. The four remaining—Miriam, Hazel, Thad, and myself—all had plausible motives to want Suzanne dead, and there is reason to believe that each of us had the opportunity to act on those motives. Miriam has accused Hazel; Hazel has cast suspicion on both Miriam and Thad; Thad is convinced that I did it; and the DA, like Thad, would like nothing better than to convict me and be done with it.”

  “That’s about it,” said Pierce, clicking his ballpoint.

  “So where do we go from here?”

  His blank expression told me he was stumped; then his eyes widened with a new thought. He suggested, “Why don’t we go upstairs?”

  I had not set foot in the murder scene since four days prior, when I discovered the body. In the back of my mind, I had recently questioned my failure to return to the third floor, dismissing this as an oversight that could not be construed as active reluctance. But of course I was kidding myself. The upstairs great room, which had so intrigued me as a child, instilling a lifelong appreciation of the aesthetic it so dramatically embodied, had now become for me a place of deep foreboding, as if it were cursed. It was time for my rational brain to overrule this senseless angst. I told Pierce, “Let’s go.”

  We left the den together, climbed the front stairs, passed the second-floor landing, and continued up the last flight to the room above. Pierce was talking about some aspect of the investigation, but I wasn’t listening, absorbed in thoughts of Christmas Day. It would be hard to shake the memory of mounting the last few stairs and catching my first glimpse of Suzanne’s bloodied body near the fire.

  Arriving at the top of the stairs, I saw that the body was gone, as I knew it surely would be, and with this observation, the room’s demons dispersed. Gone with Suzanne’s body was the florid rug on which she bled, taken, I presumed, as evidence. Crossing the room, I noted, too, that various objects were missing—heavy, blunt objects that might have been the weapon: the fireplace shovel, the candlesticks, the bust of de Tocqueville had all been bagged and tagged and taken away. Aside from the bared area in front of the fireplace, though, the room looked much as it always had, and the mess of spilled books that had littered the floor was now returned to the shelves, either by the police or by Hazel—I wasn’t sure.

  “The missing items will be returned,” Pierce told me, “as soon as it’s determined they have no evidentiary value.”

  “Don’t bother with the rug,” I said, not needing to explain that it was hopelessly stained.

  “We’ll get rid of it,” said Pierce, making a note. “The coroner needs more time with the rest. So far, he’s drawn nothing but blanks in identifying the weapon.”

  As he spoke, we strolled through the room. At its center, midway between the fireplace on the back wall and the arched window in front, there was a grouping of leather-upholstered furniture beneath the ceiling’s highest point. The sofas and chairs were draped with warm, handsome throws, and I gestured that we should sit there. A large worktable with a single desk chair stood nearby, perpendicular to the banister below the window. Overhead hung an oversize wrought-iron chandelier of whimsical design, dangling huge crystal prisms that caught light from either the window or the fireplace, depending on the time of day.

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sp; Pierce continued to explain some technicalities of the investigation, but my mind, busy with the surroundings, could not absorb his words. The lofty space had always affected me this way, awing me with its sheer scale, filling me with imagined tales of its past, tugging at my own memories of the place.

  Again I recalled my visit to Dumont three years ago, after inheriting the house from Uncle Edwin. At the recommendation of Elliot Coop, the family attorney, I had driven up from Chicago to meet Professor and Mrs. Tawkin, who were interested in buying the house from me. We met outside the house that day—it was spring, and the elms were green. Having somehow survived the pestilence that felled so many of their brothers, the trees appeared even loftier than I remembered them from my boyhood. Elliot took us all inside.

  Though thirty years had passed since I’d last seen it, the house still matched my memory of it. Some furnishings had changed, and certain features had been updated, but the general character of the place had been faithfully retained. Winding our way through the rooms, with the lawyer and the professor pointing out countless details to the wife, I grew impatient to see the upstairs again. At last Professor Tawkin said, “Now the best part, pumpkin—the third floor.”

  We climbed the back stairs, and a flood of memories rushed over me as we stepped into that pristine kitchen. The wife gabbed excitedly as we followed Elliot through the hall and into the big front room. In that instant, I was transported back to the quiet afternoons when I claimed the great room as my private domain, dreaming and writing my most private thoughts and fantasies.

  The other three were talking rapidly, tossing around comments, ideas, questions. The wife wagged the agency’s spec sheet. “Mother-in-law apartment? God, we could live up here.”

  The professor told her, “Look at this terrific banister, still intact. We could easily break through to the main staircase.”

  Of course—I realized—obviously. The front stairs had originally led directly up to the third-floor great room. The remodeling, which suddenly appeared rather clumsy, had not been apparent to me as a child. I asked Elliot, “Do you happen to know—what was this space used for? It’s always baffled me.”

  “The upstairs hasn’t been used in a long while, Mr. Manning. But many years ago, when the house was built, your uncle Edwin had a partner. They’d built up their printing business together, and then they built this house together. Your uncle and his young family—there was just the one baby then, your cousin Mark Quatrain—lived on the first two floors, and your uncle’s partner, who was not married, lived up here. An odd setup, but it seemed to work. For a few years. Then there must have been a falling-out, because the partner suddenly left the business—and the house. These rooms weren’t needed anymore, so they just weren’t used.”

  “We’ll use them,” the wife assured us. She told her husband, “I was skeptical, I admit, but I’m totally won over. Shall we sign some papers?”

  Mission accomplished. Outside, the Tawkins got into their car, and Elliot walked with me toward mine, telling me, “Before your uncle died, while he was reviewing his will, he gave me a letter and asked me to deliver it into your hand.” He produced the envelope. “There, Mr. Manning. Done.”

  “Hey, Mark”—a hand touched my knee—“is something wrong? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” It was Sheriff Pierce, leaning from the leather sofa, trying to get my attention.

  With an embarrassed laugh, I told him, “Sorry, Doug. I was lost in thought. This room has had quite an impact on my life.”

  He looked confused. “Why?” he asked, sitting back. “Suzanne’s murder would be enough to shake anyone, certainly, but was there more?”

  “I’ve loved this room since the first day I saw it, but it turns out—and it was many years later that I learned it—this room has a history, a significance that I could never have fathomed.”

  Pierce set aside his notes. “You’ve captured my attention. What happened?”

  “About three years ago, shortly after I inherited the house, I drove up here and sold it, as you know, to the Tawkins. Elliot Coop gave me a letter that day, left for me by my uncle.” I paused, not sure I was ready to tell this.

  But Pierce was hooked. “A letter? Yes? Then what?”

  “Elliot said that before my uncle died, he’d instructed Elliot to deliver the letter into my hand. He gave me the envelope right outside the house, as I was getting into my car. I placed the envelope on the passenger seat and started the car, needing to follow the buyers and Elliot to his office for some paperwork. The letter was addressed, simply, ‘Mr. Mark Manning, Jr., Chicago.’ I couldn’t quite take my eyes off it as I backed out of the driveway and pulled into the street. The other cars were well on their way, but my curiosity demanded satisfaction—then and there—so I pulled over to the curb and, in the shadow of the house, opened the envelope.”

  This, of course, was an important juncture in my narrative, and I again paused, reluctant to continue.

  “Well?” said Pierce, leaning forward. “What about the letter?”

  “I read it,” I answered, “and I still have it.”

  Pierce flumped back, tossing his hands. “That’s anticlimactic.” His disappointed tone conveyed that he knew I would not complete the story.

  “There’s more,” I conceded, then vaguely added, “maybe later.” Since I really wanted to set our conversation on a different course, and since we had already ventured into personal territory, I turned the tables, saying, “You’ve mentioned that you grew up here, Doug. What was it like?”

  “Great,” he said with a blank expression, caught unawares by my question. Then, collecting his thoughts, he became more articulate. “I may be prejudiced, but Dumont is a special kind of place. If I didn’t feel that way, I’d have taken my career elsewhere—God knows, there are other communities in far greater need of able law enforcement. By their standards, Dumont is a quiet town. Violent crime is rare, Suzanne’s case notwithstanding, and gangs are nonexistent. Believe me, it’s a fulfilling, even noble, challenge to keep it that way.”

  “Bravo,” I quietly cheered him.

  “I’m not looking for flattery,” he assured me. “A job well done is its own reward. And my reward is knowing that Dumont is still the kind of place where I’d want to raise a kid of my own.”

  “You never married.” Though the words were meant as a question, I spoke them as a statement, seeking confirmation.

  “No.” His tone was colored by the slightest awkwardness. “The right girl never came along.”

  Chortling, I told him, “I know that feeling.” My comment was intentionally flip, meant to acknowledge my homosexuality. I did not intend to imply, however, that the right girl had evaded him for the same reason. Regardless of how he read my remark, he did not respond to it.

  He continued. “Of the people I grew up with, many moved away, but there are many others I still see every day, and we all feel we have a stake in this town. Our roots are here, and now that we’ve passed into middle age, we’re running the place. Whether we’re collecting a paycheck and parenting, or serving in a public capacity as sheriff or district attorney—”

  I interrupted, “You grew up with Harley Kaiser?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. Miriam Westerman, too. We all went to school together—we’re about the same age—I’m forty-five. Harley and I were close friends through high school, but now we have nothing in common other than our work.”

  “Were you close to Miriam?” I wondered aloud.

  Pierce shook his head. “Not really. She was just another girl in class, unremarkable except for her height. But things changed after we graduated. Miriam went away to Berkeley, fried her brain, got her degree, and came back with a lot of addled ideas. Sometime in the seventies, she got Fem-Snach up and running, and during the early eighties, she first attracted Suzanne to the group.”

  This was starting to get interesting, so I got up and crossed to the desk, looking for paper. “Mind if I take a few notes?” I asked Pierce.r />
  “Be my guest,” he said, rising to face me.

  I slid a sheet of white bond out from a drawer in the work-table, then sat at the chair, uncapping my pen. Sketching the chronology Pierce had just related, I said, “You mentioned on Monday that Harley Kaiser and Miriam have forged some sort of political alliance. What was that all about?”

  “The story fast forwards to a few years ago,” he explained, “when Miriam spearheaded a campaign to pass a local ‘obscenity ordinance.’ The idea was to shut down some adult bookstores you may have noticed along the highway on the outskirts of town.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Porn shops?” I asked.

  “Exactly. Miriam and Fem-Snach took the position that pornography is (get this) ‘violence against women,’ so they sought to write a Dumont County ordinance duplicating a statewide law that had recently passed judicial scrutiny. Earlier attempts had been ruled unconstitutionally vague, but the Bible thumpers eventually managed to get something to stick in Madison.”

  “If there was already a state law,” I asked, “why would Miriam bother with the local ordinance?”

  With a frustrated toss of his hands, Pierce answered, “Miriam wanted it debated locally so that county board members would have to go on the record, for it or against it—she was trying to identify her future targets. Needless to say, most board members didn’t want to get near such a volatile, no-win issue, so the county executive deferred to both my office and Kaiser’s, seeking opinions regarding the practical, administrative implications of the proposed ordinance.”

  Guessing the answer, I asked, “What was your position?”

  Pierce approached the desk, standing opposite of where I sat. “I told them outright to forget it. I doubt that I need to detail my reasoning for you.”

  Looking up from my note taking, I reminded him, “I’m a First Amendment kind of guy, Doug.”

  “I am, too, and as far as I could always tell, so was Harley. Believe me, he had never been even remotely religious, and since these censorship campaigns are typically the work of the right-wing Christian crowd, he had no taste whatever for the ordinance. So he originally responded to the county board that he was philosophically neutral on the issue but that such a law would be difficult and expensive to enforce.”