by Cynthia Lott
“Anything I can do to help. As you know, David was my only child. He was all I had. There is nothing more I want than for this man to be caught and brought to justice. My David deserves that.” She placed her hand over the top of her teacup to feel the heat of the water permeate her thin fingers.
“It was brought to our attention that a letter was found at Colin Watkins’s home. He’s the father of Claire Watkins, the young girl who was murdered right before David. He didn’t notice this letter until some time after her death, but we think it was a direct communication from the suspect, Thomas Carpenter. We need to know if you received any letters or notes from Carpenter before David’s death.” Roy leant forward, both of his elbows on his knees.
Gwendolyn sat there for a moment, looking at us without a blink. She stared off to the side of the room as if she were remembering something, and her eyes lit up as a memory crossed her mind.
“There was something. Yes. A week before David’s death, I received around twelve cards in the mail. Some were addressed and others were left in our mailbox. They all seemed to be from friends and family congratulating David on his final auditions with the New York Ballet. We all knew he would be accepted into the company, as he was one of the few finalists. Could that be what you’re looking for? I saved all the cards. I’ll go get them.” She scampered quickly out of the room and down the hallway. Roy looked at me.
“Let’s hope she finds something. This tea is strong.” He laughed, placing his cup back down on the tray.
“I need something strong.” I dropped another sugar cube into my cup and watched it dissolve all the way, part of me wishing I could disappear along with it, away from this brooding household.
Roy placed his hand onto mine, removing it as Gwendolyn returned with a handful of letters. She poured them out onto the coffee table, the sound of hard paper hitting the glass, cards nearly sliding off of the edge.
“I didn’t even bother opening them because we received so many the weeks before. We have a lot of extended family on both of our sides, my late husband and me.” She opened one with an address and quickly tossed it to the side. “From an elderly uncle,” she said. She unsealed another and placed it back down. “From my late husband’s ex-wife. They were only married for a year before we met, but, you know. Some people are always around. Or at least they never want to go away.”
Roy helped her pull out another card. “What about this one?” We all looked at the envelope with the name in cursive black ink on the front, “Mrs. Gwendolyn Savoy.” No address was given. An uneasiness crept over me as I recognized the handwriting.
Gwendolyn sensed my apprehension and stared at the card as if it were a deadly snake. “Please…you open it.”
Her hands folded over one another as she slid against the back of the chair as far as she could go.
He eased open the sealed envelope and pulled out the card. On the cover was the picture of a pink ballerina from a music box. As Roy opened it slowly, he glanced at Gwendolyn over the top edge. “It’s from him.” Sighing, he handed the card to me. On the inside, in the same black cursive ink was the note:
Dear Mrs. Savoy, someone from your past
will make David’s final practice his last. – T.C.
I looked up at her, not wanting to disclose the card’s contents.
I can’t possibly repeat this.
“What does it say?” Her voice was heightened, anxious.
“It says he was going to pay David a visit. But you wouldn’t have known that and neither would he. We’ll need to take the card with us. It could help in deciphering who this man is. Do you know of anyone in your past that might have known Carpenter or someone in his family?”
Gwendolyn’s eyes teared up in a state of panic.
“Oh, my God. He warned me about David’s death? I could have known this? And I let them pile up there in the sitting room? I don’t know anyone who could have done this…not anyone. My husband didn’t have any enemies. I go to church every Sunday. David had good friends. This is someone from my past? There’s no one in my past, Detective, who would hate me so much as to kill my only child.” She wiped away tears.
Roy stood up from the sofa and walked over to hold her. He rubbed her back soothingly, while she sobbed into his black shirt. He whispered into her ear that everything was going to be all right.
A short time passed and Gwendolyn collected herself, fixing her disheveled hair back into a tight bun, and again gave us her full attention. She clenched her fists together in her lap, putting all of her spent energy into the clasping of her hands. Her eyes darted in the shape of a triangle: the coffee table, Roy, me, and back again.
“Mrs. Savoy, this is very important. I need for you to write down and try to remember anyone – anyone at all who might link you to this man, Thomas Carpenter. If you can remember anything, please give either Detective Agnew or me a call. You have our home and office numbers. Also, we ask that you don’t go to the media with any of this….not that you would, but we like to clarify that, because it’s happened before on other cases.” I stood up and motioned for Roy. I could tell he had some hesitation leaving her in that state.
“All right. I will. Everything is between us. Everything.” She offered a half smile as we thanked her for the tea and left. Had Gwendolyn not been a devout Catholic, she might have laced her own tea with poison or drowned herself in the nearest lake with the newfound knowledge that she, herself, might have prevented her own son’s murder.
“I don’t know about you, but I need a fucking drink.” Roy drove us back to his apartment. “I’m glad you didn’t read that card to her. That rhyming bullshit. Man, oh man, Brenda. So that’s what this is about. Carpenter knows someone in both their pasts, or he’s had a past with them himself. And what does this have to do with the third person we haven’t found yet…that third bird marked off of the illustration? That must figure into this somehow.”
“I don’t know what Carpenter is doing here.” I leant my head back against the seat cushion. “He tried to warn both of these families for God’s sake. Maybe his next victim will actually receive the damn card before they’re murdered. These immediate families don’t know one another – the Watkins and the Savoys – but that doesn’t mean in the past that their families didn’t know one another. And if there is this third person, they must have received a card as well but no one has contacted us of such. What kind of past is Carpenter talking about anyway? Near past? Distant past?”
* * *
Chapter Ten
A few weeks passed since David’s murder and neither the Watkins nor Mrs. Savoy could arrive at a determinate relationship between them and Carpenter. We waited patiently to discover the identity of the third bird scratched out on the tree limb in the illustration. The timing gave me breathing space to contemplate my father and on February 20th, I spent the day alone in my apartment with a bottle of Chianti, playing some of his favorite tunes like the Theme from A Summer Place, Frank Sinatra, and Henry Mancini. He had always found comfort in music...it was his cure all.
I talked to him over glasses of wine, drinking enough for the both of us, reliving stories and conversations that only the two of us knew. We danced to “I've Got You Under My Skin” and “Moon River” as I sobbed myself into a beautifully anxious mess. There is nothing like sharing a private moment with the dead: time is suspended and the only thing that matters is the thin veil between the two of you. He was as real to me as a living person stepping into the room, enabling the recollection of so many memories…all of them forced into a succinct eight-hour timeframe. That night, I dreamt of him.
In my dream he was bending over his vegetable crop with shearing gloves, pulling up weeds, picking off bell peppers and cucumbers to place in his basket. I stood next to him. After taking a long sip from his beer, he paused and stared at the lawn. It was glistening green, freshly mowed, the scent of grass permeating the air.
“Bren.” He looked up, shielding his eyes from a light shining behind
me. “Look at all of my vegetables. There’s enough for both of us. All of those seeds we planted months ago…look at the results.” He gave me a huge smile and then turned away, continuing his tasks of pulling weeds and sorting vegetables in his basket.
“What all did we plant, Dad? I don’t remember.” I waited but he never looked at me again. Instead, he took another long sip of his Schlitz and proceeded to dig up sweet potatoes, his hands reaching into the moist soil, dirt falling through his fingers. I woke up and swore I heard him in my kitchen rattling pots and pans, making us both breakfast. It took me a good ten minutes to convince myself that no, he was not in my apartment making us scrambled eggs and grits. Instead he was next to my mother in the Jewish cemetery, sharing space in a large tomb.
Sometimes, my mother found her way into my dreams wearing her floral housecoat while she stood in front of my bedroom window, watering the pink azalea bushes. I open the curtain as she sprays the window with her water hose. We both laugh and then she disappears behind a blur of water. This was a game we used to play, my mother’s high-pitched laughter floating away with the streams of water flowing down the panes of glass. Gone, gone, gone.
Suburbs, like the first sensation of waking from a dream, can be deceptive. They entice new homeowners with the promise of community but often, in reality, they offer only isolation and loneliness. As one descends the interstate and enters New Orleans, the St. Louis cemeteries outline their own little metropolis: mausoleum walls enclose gorgeous tombs eclectic in faiths, architecture and inhabitants. To the untrained eye, they look like small cities unto themselves. The cemeteries offer a beautiful welcoming view, and the sheer whiteness of the limestone can be breathtaking in contrast to the sprawling neighborhoods in the distance.
It was there in the suburbs where a fifty-year old Connie Sartain found the ideal place to isolate. With social anxiety that kept her housebound, Connie rarely left her cluttered ranch-style home. In fact, had her sister, Roberta, not noticed the absence of her phone calls or had her customers not complained that Connie’s highly-coveted art pieces never arrived in the mail as promised, she might have stayed lost in suburban stasis forever.
When Roberta visited the station to report her suspicions, she was insistent that it was unlike Connie – unlike her at all – to leave the house. And now, it had been two weeks since anyone had heard from her. Roy informed Roberta we would visit Connie’s home. She handed him the key and seemed to fear for the worst.
“Connie Sartain is a talented artist. Her sketches and paintings have been shown at local, statewide and even national galleries. She has a diverse set of clients, Brenda.”
“Yeah, I know who she is. Sort of. I’ve seen her work before at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She had an exhibit there last year around May I think; something about the intimate portrayal of people’s lives in New Orleans and surrounding parishes. You know, thinking back on that, she must have had a pretty good case of anxiety because she wasn’t even there for the opening night.”
“Roberta said that her neighbors wouldn’t notice whether Connie came or went. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“If she’s as introverted as her sister claims she is, maybe she wanted space from everyone. I mean is it really so odd that she hasn’t phoned in a while?” I asked, pulling my hair into a ponytail.
“Maybe you’re right. She could have taken a hiatus or gone on vacation somewhere. Fingers crossed.”
After visiting crime scenes over the past three years, I was hardly surprised at how people lived their lives. But with all things, there is an exception to the rule. Connie Sartain’s house was in a state of disarray only outdone by an overwhelming stench that made me gag several times before Roy escorted me back out through the front door. Although sensitive to smell, I had trained myself to be desensitized to the odor of death. But the stench in Connie’s home made me reel in revulsion.
“I know you can be stubborn, okay? You don’t have to go in there. Jake and I can handle this.” He held my hand between his own as I bent over, trying to catch my breath. It felt good to take in the early spring air – breathe in the scent of hyacinth flowers lining Connie’s walkway. They were clumped together in a round community near her mailbox, and wisteria wrapped itself around the brick stand. I gulped in the air and looked around at neighbors standing in front of their lawns, watching us with unmasked curiosity.
God, I must look ridiculous.
I wiped my hand across my forehead, feeling the cold sweat forming above my eyebrows.
The neighbors came out of the woodwork when the police car sped into the driveway and Jake placed yellow tape all over the front lawn. The sky formed dark clouds and I sensed the smell of impending rain in the air. Thunder rumbled in the distance as I looked back at Roy.
“Please give me something to block the smell. I can’t breathe that in right now.” I sounded pathetic.
He nodded and returned to the police car. Rifling through a red metal box where he kept first aid items, he pulled out a jar of Mentholatum.
I scooped out a liberal dose and winced as the strong menthol burned its way up my nasal passages.
“Better?” His blue eyes took on a deep sympathy for me.
“Yes, thank you. She’s in there, Roy. I know she is. Even a house full of trash doesn’t smell like that. Like death.”
“Yeah, this is bad. Listen, you can come back to the car at any time. Don’t feel obligated and don’t worry about them.” He held my right hand between his own and gestured to the crowd. “They’ll probably be around all day, but it’s going to start pouring in a minute so maybe they’ll disappear. Don’t worry about reporters either. McGuire is handling them. Let’s go back in, shall we?”
I nodded and followed him back into the house, leaving the nosey neighbors behind us. Had they all been this curious before, they might have seen Connie enter or leave her home with someone. As it stood, she had been fairly invisible to all of them.
The first thing I noticed in Sartain’s house was the clutter. Each room was stacked to the ceiling with magazines, books, newspapers, and knick-knacks. Dying and healthy plants hung on the walls and from the ceilings, forming a semi-decaying canopy.
On various tables in the living room were souvenirs: photos of her clients, newspaper clippings, and even some leftover food that was attracting a concert of flies. I put on my gloves and was thankful that my mother’s depression never took on this manifestation. I don’t know how my father and I would have been able to live with someone so dismissive of their surroundings. I suppose had I not possessed the fortitude to emerge from the loss of my father, I might have ended up like a Connie Sartain – a recluse shut away in my small apartment in the Pontalba building.
“What a mess.” I stepped over an antique typewriter as Roy ventured into another room.
“It’s awful.” His voice trailed down the hallway.
I imagined how difficult the situation was for Roy to witness. He probably wanted to stop the investigation and call a dump truck in to immediately remove the contents of the home. Or maybe he’d rather burn the whole place to the ground, eradicating its stench and unforgivable amount of trash.
As I traipsed through Connie’s living room, I noticed one whole wall covered with black and white illustrations of various city scenes: New Orleans, Paris, New York, and Chicago, all interpreted via chalk and pencil sketches. Some were traditional landmarks, while others depicted everyday life: a bread maker in Paris, a group of children in Central Park, and a dog walker near the French Quarter. All of these pictures hung against a loud backdrop of teal and yellow flowered wallpaper.
There was a dust-covered television, a couple of equally dust covered end tables and an antique china cabinet with etchings of pineapples in the glass. Inside the cabinet were porcelain dolls, antique cigarette holders, various candleholders, and piles upon piles of linen and lace placemats, next to both a plastic jack-o-lantern and a miniature Christmas tree. How had this odd assortment come to
reside in that one cabinet?
Connie’s house reminded me of flea markets where people unload whatever they don’t want and price them in lots, not even caring if they recoup their cost. One can spend half the day sorting through other people’s things – just to try to recover some sort of connection.
As I left the living room, I walked down a long hallway past more piles of art magazines and newspapers. I skirted around canvases and fabric bolts stacked precariously against the walls, spilling out of a hall closet. I nearly tripped over a basket of yarn with large sewing needles sticking out in a formidable way.
The last thing I need is to be impaled in the hallway of this dump.
I found myself at the end of the hall, walking into Connie’s bedroom where Roy stood over her body.
So she wasn’t missing at all.
Minus the busy wallpaper of green and black flowers on a white background, this was the only room where nothing hung on the walls. It actually had a strange aura of cleanliness with its spotless beige shag carpet and dust-free furniture. Roy walked towards me as Jake entered the room, touching my shoulders as he moved past me.
“Brenda, it’s ugly. She’s been here for a couple of weeks, all right? I don’t want you seeing her…do you understand? I’m telling you this as your Senior Partner. Listen, I don’t want to pull rank here but seriously…”
He turned to Jake.
“Y’all need to bust your asses outside. It’s about to rain like a motherfucker and if there is anything we can salvage, let’s get on it.”
I felt the power of the Mentholatum wearing off as I stood close to the source of the horrible stench. I tried to breathe through my mouth to stem the tide of bile rising up my throat.
