I told her I’d reread it and then detailed the curious coincidences between the plot of The Widower’s Branch and the River Valley murders.
“So you think the book has something to do with it?” Breck sounded doubtful.
“I have no idea.”
There was a distinct silence on the other end of the line. And then Breck began again. “I meant to tell you I noticed a slip of paper in the book when I was getting ready to send it. With some writing on it. Wasn’t anything remarkable, so I threw it out.”
“What kind of writing?”
“It was barely anything. It had like three words: ‘you and her,’ something of that order. Didn’t resemble your handwriting.”
“Maybe Vi’s?”
“Nope, not her handwriting, either. It was kind of scrawled. Vi grew up in the era of penmanship.”
“How odd,” I said, and then let it go.
“But I mean how is the investigation going? Do you think they’re even on the right track?”
“Hard to know. They think it’s probably somebody local who knows the back roads and isolated areas. Believe it or not, they’ve just questioned Wade.”
“Now, that nutjob makes total sense.”
“Breck! Don’t be unkind.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Mom. I’ve had the weirdest, creepiest feeling all along that we might know the person who has done all of this. Somebody who goes off on a rampage and then quiets down and lives normal. Then the cycle begins all over again. Somebody like Wade, with a fucked-up early life.”
“Some would say you had a fucked-up early life. And you’re not going around killing people.”
“No, but look how angry I was.”
Still are, I thought but didn’t say.
Breck continued, “In my case I turned it inward on myself. I easily could’ve become … an aggressive delinquent.”
“I don’t think so. Not in your nature.”
“Come on, don’t be so naive.”
“Says she who took Psych One in college.”
“Anyway, whenever I see him, Wade always seems wound so tight.”
“He is, but that doesn’t mean when he uncoils he’s going around systematically killing people. Remember, he committed one act of violence at the age of fourteen.”
“It has been proven that violence toward objects can easily become violence toward living things.”
I thought of changing the subject by confiding Anthony’s suspicion of Hiram Osmond but then decided not to.
“Who’s running this investigation, anyway?” Breck asked after a pause.
I mentioned Marco Prozzo and Breck thought his surname sounded blunt. I told her he’d loved my hibiscus tea.
“Ah,” Breck said. “That reminds me. I knew I wanted to ask you something. Vis-à-vis tea.”
“Is this going to be painful?”
“Doesn’t have to be. I guess it all depends on how attached you are to a certain heirloom.”
“I knew it, I knew it! What do you want now?”
“The tea tin we brought back from Grand Manan, the one that belonged to Granny. It has that delicate design of yellow roses.”
“I used it yesterday.”
“Ah, so … it’s in circulation?”
“You always do this to me!”
“I was fantasizing about how it would look in our kitchen—and wasn’t sure if it was…” She didn’t finish her sentence.
Our kitchen. Even though I felt possessive over this relic of my childhood, I forced myself to be generous. “Well, it is, but you’re welcome to it. I’ve got tea tins up the ying yang. Just do me one small favor. If anything happens … between the two of you, just make sure that you don’t lose it.”
There was a disagreeable pause and I was about to broach it when Breck said, “You never even ask how she is.”
“I’m sorry, Breck,” I said. “You’re right. How is Violet?”
“Violet is actually fine. She’s wondering when you’re coming to pay us a visit. We were going to invite you for the Fourth of July.”
Here was precisely where, to my great mortification, I had further failed my daughter, having had difficulty accepting the fact that she was in love with another woman.
Since Anthony and I had been more in touch of late, I’d recently spoken of this to him. His opinion was that women can be more fluid in their relationships, that a fair percentage float back and forth between male and female partners, that I shouldn’t assume that Breck (at the age of twenty-two) had settled down with a woman for the rest of her life. “Maybe she’s trying to find the love that she thinks she didn’t get from you,” he actually said to me. “Work it through with another female … an older female,” he added.
“Oh please, that is so trifling and simplistic,” I berated him. “How can you even call yourself a shrink, slinging that hash around?”
Somehow he’d maintained his patience. “Okay, Granny,” he retorted, but then pointed out something that actually did sink in: I had better be very careful, because any ambivalence, any disapproval of my daughter’s romantic life could do even more damage to our already tenuous relationship. For how could I, having had an affair with a man close in age to my own daughter, not support any serious relationship Breck was having, no matter with whom? Quite right.
“Honey,” I resumed to Breck, “you know how little I’ve traveled in the last few years. The dogs, Henrietta. It’s hard when you have critters.”
“You’ll bring the dogs. And I thought you had that young vet student who likes to come and look after Madame.” Her nickname for our beloved pig.
“As long as I can get him. That’s a popular weekend and I’m not the only person he pet-sits for who has an exotic animal.”
“Your only child has been living in New Jersey for over a year,” Breck reminded me. “A five-hour drive. If it comes down to it, we’ll send a car for you.” Violet made a pile working for the World Bank.
“Don’t waste that kind of money. I can drive myself. If you have so much dough lying around, for God’s sake give it to a charity.”
“Granny used to send cars for you.”
“I was a child. What choice did I have? Even then I thought it was needlessly extravagant.”
There was a lull in the conversation and then Breck said, “What about dear Aunt Laura? You go and visit her and her partner.”
“That’s the previous generation. I visit out of respect.”
“And devotion. You love them both.”
“I do love them, that’s true.”
There was a thoughtful lull and then Breck spoke to me in a wobbly voice, “Well … if you got to know Violet … maybe you could love her too.”
EIGHT
AFTER SPEAKING TO BRECK, I drove down to the Billings General Store to get my mail from the smart-ass postmaster who was always reluctant to hand anything over whenever I neglected to bring my mailbox key. Once I misplaced my key for almost a year, and even though the man claimed to have ordered one, it never seemed to arrive, which forced me to request my mail every time I went in, giving him a chance to harangue me. I’d neglected to get my mail for several days now and a pile of it was wedged into the postbox and needed to be yanked out. “How about those yellow slips you got for those packages last week?” the silver-haired fortyish man said to me.
“They’re at home.”
“Not where they should be,” he said with a smirking sort of glower. “Make sure you bring ’em in next time you come.”
“I’ll try to remember.”
He shook his head. “Don’t try. Remember! If I don’t get them back here, I’m not giving you your mail the next time you forget your key,” he said.
“You’re so wonderfully kind.”
“I’m being more than kind!”
Billings is a nuts-and-bolts general store, selling milk and basic staples: solid, unaffectedly prepared food, unlike the surrounding general stores that offer an array of Vermont food products and fancy san
dwiches made with such garnishes as mango chutney. Billings attracts a cluster of die-hard locals who gravitate to the back of the store and gather around a butcher-block table and a coffee machine—some of them gossip-mongers. I was standing near a group of them, sifting through my wedge of mail, when I felt a tap on the shoulder. Dressed in a cut-off T-shirt and baggy shorts, Anthony was standing behind me, holding a cardboard soup container. He was wearing a bicycle helmet.
“Happy Birthday,” he said. “Emily reminded me.”
“That my present?” I asked.
“No, it’s my lunch. Corn chowder.”
“Ah, they do make the best here.” I turned to see a line of people waiting to pay, holding containers of soup and half gallons of milk and cans of soda. “You’ve been scarce the last few days, ” I remarked.
“Been around the house a lot.” He glanced away. “Emily is getting all packed up and ready to leave. I’ve been helping her.”
Then I realized Emily had left me a phone message a few days ago and I had yet to return it. I mentioned this to Anthony and said, “Please apologize for me. I hope she doesn’t think I’m avoiding her.”
“I will. Don’t worry. She’s been really busy.” He managed to grin.
Intent upon avoiding being overheard, I motioned Anthony to step outside, and once we went through the door, I said, “Wade came to see me. Is Prozzo now changing course?”
“No, just widening his lens. He’s obligated to check out certain offenders with records.”
“But Wade is physically not very strong. It’s hard to imagine him overpowering women in a car, strangling and stabbing them.”
“I get your point. But nothing can be ruled out until all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed.”
“But would he dump a body in his own neighborhood?”
“If it turns out to be somebody down Claremont/Springfield way, they’d be dumping bodies in their backyard.”
“True. But Angela Parker weighed more than Wade.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Seems like I know all the suspects.”
“People give themselves away. You’d be surprised.”
“I don’t think anything would surprise me,” I said. “Except if the killer were you.”
“I have a wife and children who can vouch for my whereabouts on January seventeenth.” He winked at me. “Who out there can vouch for you?”
“My pig.”
“That should fly.”
“Anyway, your kids are too young to be credible witnesses.” I winked back at him. “Maybe the real reason why Emily is leaving is she can’t bear to lie for you any longer.”
Anthony suddenly looked incredibly sad. “I know you’re joking, but I guess I don’t have a sense of humor today.”
Realizing I’d pushed him too far, I apologized.
“It’s all right, for obvious reasons it’s just not a great day.” He glanced at his watch. “And now I have to go meet Marco to discuss a finding at Angela Parker’s crime site that somehow got overlooked.”
“Can you tell me about it?” I asked tentatively.
“As a matter of fact I was encouraged to tell you about it … by Marco. He seems to want to keep you in the loop. He agrees that you’re a good sounding board. Must say, it’s unusual for a seasoned investigator to want help from a civilian.”
“I guess I charmed him with dog biscuits and my homemade hibiscus tea.”
Anthony laughed. “So anyway, here’s what we have.”
On the verge of Cloudland Road, next to the orchard and right below the snowbank that was made by the plow, the Staties had found a pair of frozen tire tracks in the mud. “Those tracks were half thawed out the day you found Angela Parker,” he said.
Assuming where he was headed, I said, “But they could have been any pair of tire marks.”
“True. But remember, the snow was pretty scant up until the night of that blizzard. And the location of tire marks are off the road, meaning the driver pulled over. And then there was all that snow … to petrify them.”
“What make?”
“Bridgestone. SUVs and pickup trucks.”
“That’s a wide category.”
“It’s a certain popular issue of the tire that hardly allows us to narrow it down much except to suggest the vehicle in question had to be an SUV. The irony is that two of the models they come standard on are Wade’s and Hiram’s and my pickup truck.” I probably looked at him malevolently because he raised both hands. “Just saying.”
Then I saw some humor. “That contradicts the claim of all those folks who swear they saw some of the murdered women climbing into smaller cars. Red Ford Focus and Saturns and the like.”
“Pinch of salt with eyewitness accounts,” Anthony said. “You and I always said that only a vehicle with substantial clearance could have traveled that far up Cloudland Road, even in the beginning of the storm.” He tilted his head in the direction of the store entrance. “I have to go back in and pay for my soup. I’ll check in with you later.”
* * *
When I arrived home and began sorting through the mail, I noticed a blue aerogram that made my breath catch: the hand stamp of Matthew Blake. This was the first I’d heard from him in nearly two years. The letter showed domestic postage and the mailing mark was Cambridge, Massachusetts. I needed to steel myself before opening it. I sat down at my desk, shoving aside correspondence from readers and displacing my towering stacks of paperbacks.
Inside the envelope was a photograph of me that Matthew had taken and a printed letter—very unlike him, who always preferred to write by hand.
Dear Catherine,
I am hoping that this reaches you by your birthday. I came back to the States in early April and just happened to read about your finding the nurse’s body in The Boston Globe. When I first read it, I couldn’t imagine the shock of finding somebody murdered. I wanted to write to you then, but I was afraid you wouldn’t respond. Since I’ve come home I’ve just been trying to carry on and not think about you. But I have to admit it has been really difficult.
I don’t know if you remember when I took this photo, but it was toward the end. I can’t imagine that you look much different on your 42nd. Still beautiful, of that I am certain.
Love,
Matthew
The photograph he enclosed was taken in my apartment in Burlington in front of a cupboard where I’d displayed some of the old china that I inherited from my father’s side of the family. My dark hair was longer then, clasped behind my head in a braid that had come partially undone; and I remember we’d just finished making love. My gray eyes are lighted well, I am slightly disheveled, my cheeks rosy. And I remember thinking at the time that in the picture he’d caught me at an angle where I looked more attractive than I actually felt I was. This was flattering, obviously, but oddly painful.
Matthew had wanted to frame the photo but I had discouraged him because I felt it was an unfair representation of what I looked like. I feared finding it in years to come (after the affair was long over) and then having to witness what would strike me to be some kind of momentary (and even artificial) radiance. But now I realized with a pang this is exactly how he saw me, and, more important, perhaps how I actually appeared. And I realized that grief over this love was unalloyed with such things as survivor’s guilt, and that it probably would last the rest of my life as a series of pictures and painful memories.
I went upstairs to fetch the cardboard box where I’d stored all his letters, arranged in translucent plastic folders. I reached in and randomly selected one of two blue aerograms he sent me from Asia before he abruptly stopped communicating, my name and address penned in fountain ink, foreign stamps in oriental filigree.
“I’ve been reading Maugham,” he wrote to me. “Seems like the sort of thing you should read if you’re in Bangkok. The bookstores here have British editions and he seems to be very popular. Luckily I am living in a guest quarters that has a pretty good library.
I think about you a lot and lately I’ve been doing some of the writing exercises you had us do in class.…”
* * *
I had a hard-and-fast rule that I advanced to all the students in my seminars. Avoid writing about animals, especially dogs. When you write about animals, you engage sympathy without necessarily earning it, and then the reader can quite easily feel manipulated, something you want to avoid at all costs. A student turned in a piece about his German shepherd being hit by a car that crushed its leg and how the animal bled to death on the way to the veterinary hospital. As soon as I finished reading it, I scanned the list of student e-mails and fired one off, asking the fellow to come and see me during my office hours.
Matthew had taken some time off and, at twenty-four, was several years older than most of the other students. He arrived and left class with a bit of a swagger, with an arrogant grace, but also gave off a kind of troubled air. During the most recent class, in which he wrote about his dog, I remembered that he’d been one of the early finishers of the assignment. He’d worn a football jersey that draped barely past his belt buckle so that when he leaned back in his chair to stretch, the shirt hiked halfway up his taut belly, showing a mature line of hair weaving its way down to his beltline. I swallowed and said nothing. I’d had plenty of other male students who’d done similar things, wore their pants inappropriately tight, showed up to class in cut-off muscle T-shirts or with jeans worn low like prison garb, showing the crack of their ass, and I knew they did this out of some kind of insecurity. A remark like “This is a classroom, not an athletic field” was usually strong enough to beat the boldest boy into abeyance. But when Matthew Blake leaned back I said nothing to correct his posture, and failing to do this made me worry about the effect he had on me. I resolved then and there to make him transfer to another writing section or drop the class. The dog piece had now presented me with an opportunity.
For sometimes there are students, sexually provocative students, who question you at every turn—an unnerving mix. They know their power, they presume that you’re attracted to them. I’d been at Saint Mike’s for five years and I could spot this sort of narcissistic student pretty easily.
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