Close to Home

by Cynthia Baxter

  When the doorbell rang, she assumed that the Terminix people had dispatched one of their soldiers to do battle in her home. She glanced down, wanting to make sure she had remembered to get dressed. A gold star for her: she had indeed slipped on a pair of jeans and a sweater during one of her twenty or so trips up the stairs that morning, all of them geared toward coming up with an outfit for which Sammy would be willing to trade his Batman pajamas.

  A quick peek out the window told her her hunch had been wrong. It was not the bug man’s truck that was parked outside her house, after all. It was a police car, a sleek white vehicle with the important-looking Nassau County Police Department insignia on the door and the orange-and-blue stripes that invariably brought Howard Johnson’s to mind.

  Her mood immediately shifted from relaxed-bordering-on-lazy to just-this-side-of-panicked. Quickly she unlocked the door. Meanwhile she searched her conscience, automatically feeling guilty even though she couldn’t quite put her finger on what she should be feeling guilty about.

  “Yes, I’m Jessica McAllister,” she said to the two detectives, her voice strangely high-pitched. “Uh, why don’t you come in?”

  It wasn’t until the two men were inside, standing around awkwardly in her chaotic living room, that she mustered up the courage to ask what she instantly realized was a rather foolish question.

  “Is there, uh, something wrong?”

  “You could say that, Mrs. McAllister.” Detective Bugati’s face showed no emotion whatsoever. “Are you acquainted with an individual by the name of Lloyd Nolan?”

  Jessica blinked. “Lloyd Nolan? Uh, yes. Sure. He was our real estate agent.”

  “I see. Mr. Nolan was found in his office late Sunday afternoon. Apparently he was murdered, Mrs. McAllister.”

  “Murdered!” Jessica was so startled by having someone use that word right here in her own living room, in conjunction with someone she actually knew, that she fell backward onto the wingback chair.

  “Murdered?” she repeated.

  After all, “murder” was a word you used in reference to a television show or a mystery book or a movie rented for the VCR, not in reference to someone with whom you had once discussed aluminum siding. She felt winded, as if Sammy had just kicked her in the stomach with his size nine Nikes.

  “You seem pretty upset by this, Mrs. McAllister,” Detective Bugati observed, watching her in a way that could have been interpreted as suspicious.

  “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I—I’ve never known anyone who was murdered before.’’

  “I see. And exactly how well did you know Mr. Nolan?”

  “To be perfectly honest, I hardly knew him at all. He was a real estate agent. Oh, gee, I guess you already know that. Anyway, he sold us our house. What I mean is, he found this house for us when we were . . . Gosh, murdered? How?”

  “I’m not really in a position to go into the details at this time, ma’am.”

  “Oh, I see.’’ Jessica was struck by this police officer’s woodenness, the matter-of-fact tone with which he recited his lines— indeed, the sangfroid with which he was conducting the entire interview. Murder. She was still having a hard time just thinking the word. “Do you know who did it?”

  “No, ma’am. Not yet. That’s why I’m here. We’re trying to find that out. If I could just ask you a few questions, I won’t have to take up any more of your time.’’

  “Oh, of course.’’ What that meant, of course, was that if she could shut her mouth and let him ask the questions, she wouldn’t have to take up any more of his time. “I’m sorry.” Primly she folded her hands in her lap, trying to look as if she intended to give this interrogation the respect it deserved.

  “You see, we have information that Mr. Nolan called your house late Sunday morning. According to the medical examiner’s office, that call was put in—let’s see—just a few hours before the actual time of his death.’’

  “Lloyd Nolan called here?” Jessica’s mind was racing, her thoughts trying to break through the clouds of confusion that were suddenly clogging up her brain.

  Sunday morning, Sunday morning . . . now she remembered. “I guess I must have missed his call because I’d just left for the Sea Cliff Mini-Mart.” Trying to be helpful, she added, “I left the house with my next-door neighbor around eleven. And I was out until, gee, I guess it was between two and three when I got back.”

  “I see.” Detective Bugati was scribbling notes into a small spiral notebook. His pal, Jaworski, merely listened, keeping his eyes fixed on the half-eaten rice cake smeared with all-natural peanut butter that was balanced on one arm of the couch. “Getting back to the telephone calls, it seems that you’ve been calling Mr. Nolan’s office fairly frequently over the past few weeks.”

  Jessica could feel the color draining out of her cheeks. “I, uh, it’s because, uh . . . I can explain that. You see, at the closing for our house, we—uh, my husband and I—we overpaid Lloyd’s commission by a couple of hundred dollars, and, uh, I was trying to get it back.”

  She paused to examine the words she had just let slip out of her mouth. How were these detectives interpreting them? Did anyone ever commit murder over two hundred dollars?

  Detective Bugati merely nodded and made a few more notes in his spiral notebook. Jessica was hoping for a reassuring word. A chuckle, perhaps, over the insignificance of her association with the victim. Instead, all she got was a grunt.

  “So the money matter was never actually cleared up,” he said, making a statement rather than a question.

  “Well, it certainly sounds as if he meant to take care of it,” she insisted, the cheerfulness in her voice sounding horribly forced. “I mean, he did call me back Sunday morning.”

  “Right.” A totally noncommittal syllable. “And what about your husband, Mrs. McAllister?”

  “David? Oh, he was out all day. He left here at eight and didn’t get back until after six.” Then, to show she was cooperating fully with the law, she added, “He was in New Jersey.”

  “New Jersey?” Detective Bugati repeated.

  That was enough to make anybody suspicious, Jessica could see. “Yes, he was attending a seminar there. It was all day Saturday and all day Sunday. He’s, uh, an engineer.” Despite her good intentions, she wasn’t going to be so cooperative that she’d readily admit that her husband had spent an entire weekend learning about dirt. So what if it was dressed up with the fancy phrase “soil mechanics”?

  “Overall,” said Detective Bugati, his pen poised above his spiral notebook, “how would you characterize the dealings that you and your husband had with Lloyd Nolan?”

  Jessica hesitated. All she could think about was the man’s wandering hands. What was that old phrase from junior high? “Roman hands and Russian fingers?” But she doubted that that was the kind of thing Detective Bugati was looking for.

  Still, thinking back to her association with Lusty Lloyd made her wonder if maybe he was involved in something besides real estate. Perhaps moonlighting in something requiring equally low moral standards had finally caught up with him. She began spinning a fantasy starring vengeful housewives who had at one time been lured into posing for Lloyd’s probing Polaroid, draped across the backyard hammock dressed in nothing except a pair of lavender gingham oven mitts.

  But this was hardly the time or place for sharing the fruits of her overactive imagination. Especially with two police detectives.

  “The dealings that my husband and I had with Lloyd—Mr. Nolan—were always friendly enough,” she said. “We were looking for a house in this area, and his real estate agency had lots of listings here in Sea Cliff. The whole thing was straightforward, completely matter-of-fact. He showed us eight or ten houses, and this was the one we decided was right for us.”

  Officer Bugati glanced around the living room, a look of total disbelief crossing his face for the first time since he had come into her home. Jessica’s eyes followed his, taking in the raw edges of the unframed sheet rock surrounding t
he windows; the front door with the paint removed in spots, giving it a grotesque mottled effect; the splotchy white walls of the dining room where she had yet to paint over the uneven prime coat.

  But it appeared that their little interview was just about over. Already Officer Bugati was folding over the top of his pad. Jessica was almost disappointed over how little he had actually wanted to know. No questions about the possibilities of a sordid past, no insinuations about the true nature of her relationship with the deceased, not even a question beginning with, “And where were you on the night of . . . ?”

  “Just one more question, Mrs. McAllister, and this is one we always ask. Do you know of anyone who might have wanted Mr. Nolan dead, for any reason at all?”

  Jessica pretended to think long and hard. Then she shook her head, her lips pursed together to show how sorry she was that she could be of no help at all. “No, I don’t. I mean, I hardly knew the man.” She shrugged, demonstrating just how helpless in this matter she really was.

  “That’ll be it, then. Thanks for your time.”

  “Uh, Detective Bugati?” she asked in a thin, rather pathetic voice, striding after him as he headed for the door.

  “Yes, Mrs. McAllister?”

  Jessica swallowed hard. “Am I, uh, a suspect or anything?”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. McAllister. This is all pretty routine stuff, checking out the phone calls and everything.”

  As he was about to leave. Detective Bugati turned back and surveyed the living room one more time. “If I were you,” he said, gesturing with his chin, “I’d get those slipcovers to the cleaners before that stain had a chance to set in.”

  Chapter Four

  “David, you’re never going to believe what happened today!” Jessica pounced upon her husband the moment he walked in the back door.

  Instead of jumping on the bandwagon of her obvious enthusiasm, however, he simply stared at her, his eyes as tired as hers were bright. “Jess, if you don’t mind—”

  “I’ve got to tell you this, David,” Jessica insisted. “You’re not going to believe it.’’

  “Can’t it wait? I just walked in the door.”

  By that time, Sammy had realized that the high point of his day has just occurred: Daddy was home. With a gleeful shriek he toppled the two-foot Lego tower he had been diligently constructing for the past ten minutes, awarding his mother a hiatus as she mercilessly pounded raw chicken breasts with a wooden hammer in preparation for tonight’s Chicken Dijon.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” He raced into the kitchen, his little arms flailing and his sturdy legs pumping as hard as they could.

  Instead of depositing his black canvas shoulder bag on the kitchen counter, crouching down, and extending his arms for a big bear hug—the way Robert Young surely would have done— David winced. It wasn’t until his son had slammed against his legs in an awkward version of an embrace that David leaned down reluctantly and picked the boy up.

  “Look, everybody, I just walked in the door. Could I have two minutes to myself, please? I spent all day on the phone, arguing with some . . . some imbecile up in Connecticut who seems to think building codes are for everybody else. And then traffic on the Long Island Expressway was a total disaster. Can I at least take my coat off?”

  Dutifully Jessica lapsed into silence. It was a combination of a guilty silence, for having failed to be sufficiently sensitive to her husband’s needs, and an angry silence, for his failing to respond to hers. After all, it wasn’t every day that she had something interesting to report. It wasn’t exactly as if her life were so full of thrills and chills that a visit from two police detectives, announcing the murder of a shared acquaintance, was just another amusing anecdote to be mentioned casually over dessert. This was hot, really hot, and he wasn’t letting her take full advantage of her big chance to squeeze a little drama into their lives.

  Sammy, as usual, was not as willing to comply with his dad’s request for some space. Even after his father set him back down on the floor after a rather cursory hug, he continued with his song and dance. He was determined to be acknowledged by his father, no matter what it took. When the most obvious ways of getting attention proved futile—the old standbys like whining and jumping up and down—he looked for a more creative means of capturing his father’s interest. He grabbed a spoon off the counter and hurled it across the floor.

  David groaned. “Jessica, please. Can’t I at least get as far as the dining room without having to deal with some family crisis?”

  “For heaven’s sake, David,” she countered, trying to stay in control. “He hasn’t seen you all day. He’s just glad to see you, that’s all.” She picked up their little boy, now screaming his resentment, and plopped him into one of the kitchen chairs after pulling it out into the middle of the floor, away from all temptations.

  “There, now, Sammy. You sit there until you calm down,” she told him, but her heart was only half in it.

  “I’m going upstairs to take a shower.” David had already peeled off his coat and was heading toward the stairway. Jessica found she could no longer hold back.

  “Pardon me. I know you’ve got more important things on your mind, but I just thought you might be interested in hearing about something as important as a recent death.”

  “A recent death?” David stopped in his tracks. “Who died?”

  “Not just any old death, either. I mean, it’s not every day that someone gets murdered right here in Sea Cliff.”

  “Murdered? Who the hell was murdered? Someone we know?”

  Jessica nodded. This was a pretty sneaky thing to do, she knew, resorting to the use of sensational Enquirer-style headlines in order to get her husband to listen to her. But in this case she felt the need to bring in the big guns. Besides, whatever remorse she may have been experiencing was kept at bay by the conviction that she deserved a little bit more from her husband than a crummy hello and the backside of a bathroom door.

  “Sammy, you can get off the chair now,” she called into the kitchen, having decided that thirty seconds’ punishment was sufficient for the crime.

  “For your information,” she went on, turning her attention back to David, still poised at the foot of the stairs, “Lloyd Nolan can no longer be counted among the living.”

  “Lloyd who?” David was more annoyed than ever. He was even scowling. Jessica could see that he felt he had been tricked, that his wife had hit him over the head with the fact that someone he knew had been murdered, only to inform him a few seconds later that the victim was someone he couldn’t even place.

  “Lloyd Nolan, for heaven’s sake. The real estate agent? The guy who found us this house, remember?”

  “Oh.” He turned and began taking the stairs two at a time.

  He had gotten as far as four steps when Jessica cried, “Is that all you can say? ‘Oh?’ Someone we know is cut down in cold blood, and—”

  “You’ve been watching Kojak reruns again, haven’t you?” David accused. “Look, I’m going upstairs to take a shower. Could you please keep Sammy occupied for all of ten minutes?’’

  “Dad-deee!” Sammy wailed, scrambling up the steps after his fleeing father.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Jessica thought morosely, standing at the bottom of the staircase and wondering if she should tear her shrieking child away from the man he idolized or force the two men in her life to deal with the situation themselves. She found herself remembering a conversation she and David had had almost four years earlier.

  It was right after their very first Lamaze class. Feeling both shaken and exhilarated, the two of them had retreated to the nearest coffee shop. They sat next to the window, sipping decaf, watching the crowds of early evening commuters hurrying home. It was the first time the two of them had had any real sense of the momentousness of what they were now just a few weeks away from doing.

  “David,” Jessica said, reaching for her husband’s hand across the table, “I’m scared.”

  “Lo
ok, how bad can it be?” David replied with false heartiness. “Hey, if childbirth were really so terrible, women would never go back to have a second baby, would they?”

  A knot formed in her stomach as she thought about the graph their instructor had shown them, the one meant to illustrate the varying degrees of pain in each stage of labor. Stage one had been a wavy line, state two a zigzag, and stage three—the dreaded “transition”—black gashes across the grid that reminded her of lightning bolts.

  “Actually, that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m scared of is what it’s really, really going to be like to be a mother.”

  - She hesitated, placing her free hand on the medicine ball that was her middle. “I’m also afraid of how this little bundle of energy is going to change us. Our relationship. The last thing in the world that I want is for you and me to slide into the traditional roles. You know, me turning into an earth mother and you becoming nothing more than a paycheck with an afternoon free for tossing a frisbee around the park once every three or four months.”

  David earnestly considered what she had said. “Well, then, we’ll just have to make a real point of doing things differently. You and I will share both the responsibilities and the rewards. Hey, the father of the eighties is supposed to be involved, right? I’m going to change Tiny’s diapers, read Penelope Leach cover to cover, make a total fool of myself reading Dr. Seuss aloud in a funny voice. . . .” He frowned. “Do you suppose by the time we have this baby, medical science will have found a way for fathers to breast-feed?”

  She remembered feeling she was the luckiest woman in the world to be married to a man like David. And, at first, their noble intentions had been easy enough to put into practice. They had taken turns staying up with Sammy during his early infancy, when the concept of darkness and sleeping going hand in hand had completely eluded him. Together they puzzled over the instruction booklet on how to put on a Snugli and read Consumer Reports in search of the safest car seat. After all, it was all as new to Jessica as it was to David. There was so much to learn about being a parent, and there was no reason why daddies couldn’t learn it just as easily as mommies.