by Anne Canadeo
Suzanne led him to the long oak table. He sat down, put his head in his hands, and started sobbing again. Deep, uncontrollable sobs that shook his entire body. Lucy put her arm around his shoulder. He barely seemed aware of her. She glanced at Suzanne, who scuttled around the kitchen, fixing Jamie a glass of ice water, though the gesture seemed pointless, they both knew.
“I must have called her twenty times yesterday. I think she finally shut her phone off. I tried last night and there was no answer …” he sobbed. “I thought maybe she went out … or went to bed early. I had no idea …” he gasped.
“Of course you didn’t. How could you have known? It was a freak accident.” Suzanne set the glass in front of him. The ice cubes tinkled.
He lifted his head and looked at each of them in turn, wiping his tears with the back of his hand. “I asked her to meet me in Boston. I wanted her to come to the party. But she just wouldn’t,” he said, sounding sad and frustrated. “She was so stubborn sometimes.”
“I saw her in town last night,” Lucy said. “She told me that you wanted her to join you. But she really wanted to give you some space,” she tried to explain.
“I didn’t need my space … I needed her,” Jamie sobbed. “If only she’d come with me, this wouldn’t have happened…. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I can live without her …”
Lucy and Suzanne stared at each other. Neither of them knew what to do. Suzanne leaned over and patted his back again. “Jamie, honey … please …”
That’s all she could say. Lucy understood. She couldn’t say, “Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay.” It wasn’t going to be okay. He loved Gloria and in the blink of an eye, she’d been taken from him. He was reeling, like a wounded, stunned animal.
“Maybe we should call Dana,” Lucy whispered, thinking their friend could help with professional grief counseling right now.
“I tried her right after I called you. There was no answer,” Suzanne whispered back. “I left a message on her cell,” she added.
Lucy nodded, hoping Dana would call back.
Detective Walsh walked in. “How’s he doing?” the detective asked Lucy.
“Not good. He’s really shaken.” A vast understatement, she knew, but she didn’t know how else to describe it.
The detective looked at Jamie. “This is the medical examiner, Dr. Cowald. He’d like to ask you a few more questions, Mr. Barnett. It shouldn’t take very long.”
Jamie stared at him bleakly. Then nodded. “Might as well get it over with.”
The detective looked relieved, Lucy thought. He probably wanted to wrap it up and file his report. He asked Lucy and Suzanne to wait in the next room. He’d call them when he was through.
They sat down together in the living room again. Two uniformed policemen lingered, milling around, but some others had gone, Lucy noticed.
“I guess they finally let the Buellers leave,” Suzanne said, looking around for her clients.
“Looks like the police are almost done here,” Lucy replied. “I think we ought to make some calls while we’re waiting. Maggie and Dana need to know.”
Suzanne nodded her chin, trembling as she pulled out her cell phone. “Yes, we need to tell them. It’s too bad it has to be over the phone. I’ll try Dana first,” she said, dialing the number.
“Do you want me to talk?” Lucy offered. Suzanne quickly nodded and Lucy took the phone. Suzanne had been through a lot today. It was only right to help with this unhappy duty.
It was almost two hours later when Lucy, Suzanne, Maggie, and Dana were sitting in Lucy’s kitchen, sharing an order of Chinese takeout.
“So Jamie went to stay with a friend?” Dana asked.
“A guy named Kenny that he plays tennis with came to pick him up. I asked him to come here, but I knew he felt awkward about it.”
“I can understand that,” Maggie said. “It may have been too much for him, seeing all of us tonight. He might need to be with someone who didn’t know Gloria that well.”
“I’m glad he’s not alone tonight,” Dana said. “That’s the important thing. Suzanne described him as despondent.”
“It was so sad. He said he didn’t know if he could live without her. Doesn’t that just break your heart?” Suzanne sighed and twirled her fork in a pile of lo mein noodles.
Lucy helped herself to a slice of scallion pancake. While she was at Gloria’s she’d felt as if she’d never want to eat again. Now she felt suddenly ravenous. Some affirming life force thing kicking in?
“The police said he couldn’t stay there,” Lucy clarified for her friends. “They’re still investigating. He’ll probably be able to get back in tomorrow.”
“They’re acting like it’s a crime scene.” Maggie sounded surprised. “Did they say why?”
“I asked about that,” Suzanne replied. “Walsh said it was routine procedure since Gloria had no known medical problems and she had died alone. He said it was pretty much the medical examiner’s call and he was known to do things by the book. Once they get the autopsy back, they’ll know the full story.”
“I see.” Maggie nodded, looking very solemn. She didn’t touch her food, but took a sip of hot tea.
Lucy knew how she felt. No one could believe it. It felt as if Gloria might walk in any moment with one of her big, loud “Hi, girls, what’s up?” greetings, flaunting some new outfit or a pair of jaw-dropping shoes, Jamie trailing along behind her like a loyal pet.
“Then what?” Dana asked, helping herself to a few more spoonfuls of Szechuan tofu.
“Then he gets the body back and can plan a funeral, or whatever. I wonder if he even knows what she wanted. It’s not something most people talk about. Not at her age,” Suzanne pointed out.
“She told me a few times. She said she wanted to be cremated,” Maggie told them quietly. “And have her ashes spread over George Clooney.”
No one laughed out loud. But they couldn’t help smiling. The line was just so Gloria. Lucy could hear her say it.
“He’ll need some help making plans,” Dana pointed out. She put her plate aside and took out her knitting.
Maggie did the same. “We can help him. If he wants us to,” she added. “I don’t want to seem as if I’m meddling. This is such a hard time for him.”
“I mentioned it to him at the house.” Lucy picked up a few dishes and brought them to the sink. “He seemed grateful for any advice. He has no idea what to do first.”
“There’s so much paperwork when someone dies. When Bill died, it was so sudden. He had a will, thank goodness, but there was so much we didn’t have in order.” Maggie sighed and began casting on stitches with deep plum-colored yarn. She had started her squares for the blanket, Lucy noticed, and had already completed one.
“I wonder about Gloria. All those properties she owns and she has interests in different businesses. I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot to unravel,” Suzanne said.
Lucy agreed with her. Gloria was never that specific about the details, but her conversations were studded with hints about owning a bit of this and a bit of that. Like iridescent beads twinkling on an evening gown. There was a large cache of real estate, a legacy from George Thurman. But so much more. Lucy was sure that her knitting friends hadn’t even seen the tip of the iceberg.
“I can make some coffee, or tea. Would you like to stay here or move into the living room for dessert?” she asked her friends.
“Let’s just stay here. It’s comfortable.” Suzanne also took out her knitting. She’d stopped at home on her way to Lucy’s house and picked up a few necessities for her overnight visit, including her knitting bag.
Lucy cleared the plates and the food, then wiped down the table. Her friends didn’t seem to care, but she didn’t want anyone to find black bean sauce on their project tomorrow.
“Thank goodness Kevin and the kids are away tonight,” Suzanne said, measuring her progress against a cardboard template. “I’m so glad I don’t have to face them,” she admitt
ed. “I’m just too burned-out.”
“Get a good night’s sleep. You’ll feel a little better tomorrow,” Dana said.
“If I can sleep,” Suzanne replied.
“Suzanne is going to stay here tonight,” Lucy told the others.
“That’s good. I was wondering. You shouldn’t be alone.” Maggie had begun knitting and didn’t look up.
“This morning I was so relieved to have the house all to myself for the weekend. Now I wish they were all home, driving me crazy,” Suzanne confessed.
“What did the police ask you? Did they question you for very long?” Dana asked curiously.
“It felt like a long time. But maybe it really wasn’t,” Suzanne replied. “They asked me what I was doing at the house and how I’d gotten in, of course. Then how long I’d known Gloria and when was the last time I’d spoken to her. How did she sound, that sort of thing.”
“When was that? Yesterday, when she signed your agreement?” Maggie asked, looking up.
“That was the last time I saw her. But I called her late last night, to see if I could bring the Buellers over. It was about eleven, I guess. I thought it might be too late to call, but she always said she was a night owl and since Jamie wasn’t home, I figured it was okay.”
“So she must have fallen in the pool sometime after eleven,” Lucy said quietly, trying to piece it all together. She’d been back here with Matt by then. Not giving Gloria a thought. The realization was chilling.
“Determining the time of death when someone has drowned is a little more complicated,” Dana told her. “But the medical examiner has ways of figuring it out …” She paused and Lucy realized that she probably knew more but didn’t want to go into any gruesome details. Not when they were all picturing Gloria.
“I guess they can tell if she tripped and hit her head, or something—any sort of accident that made it hard for her to swim.”
Those were all possibilities, Lucy thought.
“Yes, they would see an injury during the autopsy,” Dana replied evenly, without looking up from her knitting. “If she’d had a heart attack. Or a bit too much to drink and had taken a bad fall … well, it could have happened that way.”
“She didn’t sound like she’d been drinking when I spoke to her,” Suzanne told them. “She sounded up. Excited about people coming to see the house so soon. But not tipsy. She’d already given me the code for the alarm. But it wasn’t on when I got there. She had probably planned to turn it on when she went to bed … but never made it.”
Lucy placed a pot of coffee on the table along with some cups, milk, and sugar. She didn’t have much in the house for dessert but had found a frozen chocolate cake in the freezer—a PMS emergency stash—and had set it out earlier to defrost, so it was just about soft enough to slice.
“We didn’t talk for very long. Someone came to the door. I heard the bell and she said she had to go.”
“A visitor, at that hour?” Maggie was surprised.
“Maybe she was just getting a takeout delivery?” Dana suggested.
“I saw her in town, at the Main Street Café. She was meeting friends for dinner. You know Gloria. A bird couldn’t survive on her calorie intake. I doubt she’d eat dinner out and then order a pizza.”
Dana’s eyebrows rose behind her reading glasses. “Maybe she had an eating disorder, binging and purging. With Jamie gone, it was the perfect time to indulge.”
It was possible, Lucy thought. Gloria was a real perfectionist about her appearance, the ideal candidate for that type of problem.
“Hold on a minute. Before we start slapping a diagnosis on the poor woman, let’s just slow down,” Maggie cut in. “Gloria is gone. She can’t speak in her own defense and we really have no idea why the doorbell rang … or if it even was her doorbell you heard, Suzanne. Maybe it was the TV,” Maggie posited. “Isn’t that possible?”
“I guess so,” Suzanne admitted.
“Did she say, ‘I have to go. There’s someone at the door’?” Lucy asked.
“No, I don’t think she did,” Suzanne replied, her dark eyes narrowing as she tried to remember their last conversation. “I guess I just got that impression from the way she told me she had to run. The tone of her voice. I heard a bell and I assumed someone was at the door.”
“She may have wanted to end the call for a lot of reasons. We just don’t know,” Lucy said, agreeing with Maggie.
“I did see two wineglasses in the living room,” Suzanne suddenly recalled. “The room was sort of messy when I came in to show the house to the Buellers. I was annoyed that Gloria had forgotten to clean up. Of course, I didn’t realize …” Her voice trailed off sadly. “Well, maybe she did have a visitor last night. Maybe it wasn’t the TV,” Suzanne added, glancing at Maggie.
Maggie pursed her lips and looked down at her knitting, gently pulling loose the row of stitches she’d just completed. Lucy was quietly shocked by the sight. She’d rarely seen Maggie take a stray step in her knitting and the blanket square was the most elementary of patterns. She must really be upset, Lucy realized.
“Two empty glasses,” Dana repeated. “They may have both been Gloria’s,” she mused. “You should see our family room after Jack spends a night in there watching TV. There are about ten dirty glasses and dishes lying around.”
“Same at my house … only worse,” Suzanne agreed. “It looks like a catering hall after a wedding.”
“Did you tell the police?” Dana asked.
“The detective just wrote everything down. I told him about the wineglasses because he made me go through every single thing I did in the house before we found her. I took them into the kitchen, rinsed them out, and put them in the dishwasher. You don’t want buyers looking at a luxury property like that and smelling stale wine, right?”
“What did Detective Walsh say when you told him you washed off the glasses?” Dana asked.
“You know him. He never says much. He sort of scowled. Or maybe that’s just his usual expression. The other glass that was outside by the pool was still there when the police came and no one had touched it. I don’t think he cared too much, one way or the other. Though the police were pretty careful handling things,” Suzanne added.
“I know it wasn’t your fault, Suzanne. But if there were any fingerprints to back up the theory that Gloria had a visitor, the evidence went down the drain,” Dana replied.
“I guess so. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the wineglasses, but Walsh and the medical examiner asked me about Gloria’s drinking habits,” Suzanne confided. “I didn’t know what to say. I felt put on the spot.”
“That question is standard procedure when someone dies in an accident. Especially by drowning in their own pool.” Dana’s husband, Jack, was a former police detective who had left the force years ago to become an attorney. She knew more than most people about the ins and out of police work. “Alcohol use makes all kinds of accidental deaths more likely. And they need to rule out suicide or foul play. They’ll check her blood for alcohol and drugs.”
“Suicide. Right. They did ask me about her mood the last few days. Why was she selling the house? Did I think she seemed sad or depressed about it. Or if she had sounded depressed when we spoke late last night,” Suzanne recalled.
“She seemed fine when I saw her. Did she sound down about selling the house, though?” Lucy asked curiously. “I mean, when you met with her privately. She didn’t seem to have any regrets when she told us Thursday night.”
“She seemed eager to sell it, I thought,” Dana said. “Excited about the idea of getting a new place with Jamie.”
“I thought she seemed excited about that decision, too,” Maggie agreed. “But that was only natural, since they were newlyweds. She wanted to start off with a clean slate. George Thurman built that house for her, you know. It probably brought back a lot of memories.” She sighed and paused to examine her work. “I met her several years after George died,” Maggie continued, “and I honestly never expe
cted her to marry again. She was always flitting in and out of relationships. You can just imagine Gloria, ten years younger. She had her pick of men around here. But she never seemed to take any of them seriously. She often told me she didn’t see the point in being married. Not anymore. She liked her freedom and she certainly didn’t need a man to support her. She didn’t see any reason to tie herself down again. I secretly thought she was afraid that most men were only after her money.”
“Then Jamie came along and changed her mind about all that.” Suzanne sighed and turned her knitted square over to work on the other side.
“Jamie changed everything. I’d never seen her so happy. I mean, really happy,” Maggie confessed.
“That’s basically what I told the police.” Suzanne took a cup of coffee and added a dollop of milk. “That she seemed very upbeat whenever I saw her. As far as her drinking habits went, well … I wasn’t sure what to say,” Suzanne admitted. “Gloria liked to decompress with a martini, or a glass of wine. We all knew that about her. So I did say she drank a little. Maybe more than a little, at times. I’d seen her high-spirited. But she never really overdid it.”
“You told the truth. That’s all you could do. I’m sure they asked Jamie the same thing,” Lucy told Suzanne. “She really didn’t overdo it. She was too worried about all the extra calories.”
“He also asked me if she took any medication that I knew of, or had any health problems. High blood pressure, that sort of thing,” Suzanne added. “I guess he asked Jamie all those questions, too. I told him she seemed in great shape to me. I’d never heard her mention any physical problems.”
“She was very careful about her health. She was in great shape for her age. She really worked at it,” Maggie noted, her words edged with regret.
“She did make an effort,” Dana agreed. “More than most people. She should have lived a very long life.”
“Poor Gloria. Such a waste, such a shame.” Maggie was feeling overwhelmed again. She put down her knitting and picked up a tissue from the box Suzanne handed across the table.
