While we crossed through Washington Square and the preserved brick facades of Society Hill, Mackenzie mentioned that he’d talked with Owen Edwards after the funeral, and would probably get information later today about Nina’s brother, Jay Kress. “At a civilized hour,” he said. “Even when life and death’s concerned some people—professional people—understand about days off.”
We were there on time, washed and semi-starched. Penelope checked her watch as we entered, and the gesture made me want to slap her. Instead, I sat down and waited for the unhappy-looking waitress to notice her two new customers.
It was eight-fifteen Saturday morning, and she’d driven in from the Main Line at seven A.M. And yet her coal-dust hair looked sculpted into a stiff pouf that made her resemble an Edward Gorey drawing. She wore a tailored dove-gray suit with a burgundy silk blouse and looked ready to run a corporation, not talk with two sleepy part-time detectives.
“What have you found?” she asked before a single sip of caffeine could reach our lips and brains. She already had a small teapot in front of her, and she made no mention of actual breakfasts. Fine. Mackenzie and I would stop at Reading Market on the way home and stuff ourselves. Hot, freshly baked soft pretzels sounded a reasonable way to start the day, and if we topped them off with homemade ice cream, we’d have our dairy allowance as well.
“Surely you’ve found something by now,” she said. “Poor Tomas is dead and buried and it can’t be that his murderers are going to profit from it.”
“We’ve found out a lot.” Mackenzie slathered Southern on his vowels. That usually calms savage organisms, but I wasn’t sure Ms. Koepple was soothable. “Unfortunately or fortunately, none of it incriminates Cornelius.”
“And by the way,” I added, “that is his given name.”
She leaned back in her chair, as if to remove herself from me. “You’ve spoken with his cohort, then.”
“If you mean Georgeanne Errico, yes. But that wasn’t how we verified his name.”
“But as a character reference . . . well—what would she say? They’ll cover for each other. They have this all planned out.”
“We checked Social Security records and birth records, ma’am,” Mackenzie said. “School records. Work records. That’s his given name, an’ he has no criminal record.”
“It will all be in the report,” I said, “but the bottom line is—nothing criminal, nothing even unethical.”
“As far as you can tell,” she said with a slight sniff.
“It’s understandable if you don’t like him,” Mackenzie said. “Or if you don’t think this engagement’s the best idea. But he’s legit, and we’ve done about all we can—”
I kicked him gently under the tabletop and interrupted. “—in the preliminary investigative phase. Who knows what we’ll turn up next?”
“You should have already . . .” She didn’t bother finishing the thought. We had failed her.
Mackenzie waited a moment, then spoke in a low voice that was close to a whisper. “You strike me as an upright, law-abidin’ woman with a strong desire to see justice—true justice—done. You don’ want us to falsify anythin’, do you?”
She didn’t answer instantly, which was answer enough. “Of course not,” she ultimately said with no conviction. And then her facial muscles realigned into an expression that looked hungry, though not for food. Hungry to tell.
Mackenzie, no slouch he, saw it too, and he waited, like a predator outside a cave. And when the silence stretched tendrils into the discomfort zone, he said in that voice that’s so low you’re surprised you’re hearing every word, “What is it you want to tell me?”
She shook her head, then looked down at her hand on the table.
“Can’t help as much as possible if you don’t say what’s on your mind,” Mackenzie said.
“It’s simply that . . . I know he was involved in Tomas’s death.” She twisted her paper napkin until it looked like a cheese straw, then she untwisted it and began the process again. “I find it, I find it unbearable if you can’t . . .”
“What makes you positive?” I asked.
I was sure she’d say something about character, or woman’s intuition, or something along those lines, but instead, she dragged her eyes up until she looked levelly at us. “I saw him at the crime scene.”
“Saw him?” we said in unison.
“Saw him push Tomas down the stairs?” Mackenzie asked.
She shook her head. “Saw him following him.”
Mackenzie put down his coffee mug and held up his hand like a crossing guard. “Let’s take this step by step. Where and when did you see him? An’ I take it the two ‘hims’ means you saw Cornelius following Tomas.”
She nodded.
“So where? When?”
She took a deep breath. She no longer looked us in the eye. “Tomas came out of the café near the Square, about two blocks north, on Eighteenth.”
I thought I knew the place she meant. Cute, with small green awnings and crisscrossed curtains at its many-paned windows, and a constant flow of people in need of nonalcoholic beverages and a sweet. I always suspected that they piped the scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls out onto the street.
“Did he come out alone?” Mackenzie asked.
She was silent. “I’m not sure. I actually saw him across the street from the coffee shop, but he was carrying a cup—the take-out kind, so it was obvious where he’d been. I was surprised. I thought he’d had a lunch date, and the coffee shop doesn’t serve real food.”
“But he was alone,” I said. “Not with a companion.”
She hesitated. “Nobody was talking to him. There were people on the sidewalk, men and women, but I didn’t see any interaction.”
“And Cornelius?”
“Half a block later, I realized that there he was, on the other side of the street, pacing himself so that he was like a mirror image, moving just as fast as Tomas and no faster.” She looked first at Mackenzie, then at me. I had no idea how to respond, or to know whether I was upset or delighted by this news.
“What happened next?” Mackenzie prompted.
“I followed him or rather them—”
“On foot?”
She nodded. “That brought us near the school, and I saw Cornelius cross the street, and then I was afraid he’d see me, so I left.”
Of course it could have been coincidence. The Cornelius and Tomas part, at least. They’d both been nearby at the lawyer’s. They had both presumably done something nearby—eaten, gone somewhere—for an hour, and if they then happened to be walking in the same direction later on in the day, so what? She hadn’t seen them leave the café together, nor had she seen them enter the school together. So of what was this evidence?
Aside from that, there was an obvious question, but it seemed impolitic to ask it outright. I was still working on how to phrase it when Mackenzie, in his half purr, half growl, saved me further deliberation. “How’d it happen that you were following Tomas?” he asked.
Once again, she looked down at her hands, now folded on the table. She waited awhile then spoke with none of her customary arrogance. “I wasn’t. Not really.”
“You happened to be downtown walking around? In the same area as the lawyer the men were seeing?”
“Yes,” she snapped, looking directly at Mackenzie, her eyes unblinking. I was sure that boring-through-you look had been effective many times. But not this time. “I spotted him—Tomas, I mean, and I wanted to ask him what had happened at the lawyer’s. I meant about his mother’s decisions, her mental health hearing. He wouldn’t tell me. Sometimes he seemed to care about pursuing a hearing, and sometimes not. Entirely too much hinged on his whims.” She pursed her lips, silencing herself.
“What hinged on his decision or his ability to deal with his mother?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Her estate, the apartment houses, control, if he had power of attorney, if she was declared incompetent—” She was spluttering, very un-Jane Austen n
ow, trying hard not to mention the part that touched her directly, the bequest that would allow her to safely stop working, that would free her of all this. That couldn’t be changed if the will remained as is. If Ingrid couldn’t change it.
It was hard believing she’d accidentally stumbled across the men that day and it was painfully apparent that she had never once mentioned the fact that she’d been fired, that her days with the Severin household were numbered.
If Cornelius had been telling the truth. There was not one single person involved in Tom Severin’s life and death whom I believed or fully trusted.
Except Zachary.
“Did the two men speak? Did they go into the building together?” I asked.
“I couldn’t say. I didn’t want Tomas to see me, nor Cornelius, for that matter. As soon as Cornelius crossed the street, I felt obliged to leave the scene.”
“You didn’t ask Cornelius why he was there?” Mackenzie had perfected the art of asking hard questions in the softest, least threatening manner.
“Of course not! I didn’t speak to him—I hid when I saw him! And when I reemerged, neither man was anywhere to be seen. Had I spoken to Cornelius, he’d have run directly to Ingrid, and she’s besotted with him. He’s charmed her into idiocy, so of course not! What would I say? What would be my explanation?”
“That you’d seen him accidentally, the way you said you did.” I widened my eyes and made my voice innocent, outraged on her behalf. “I assume you had appointments in the city . . .”
She said nothing for much too long, and when she finally spoke, she mumbled. Her Prussian ancestors would have been ashamed of her. “She wouldn’t have believed me,” she said. “She—she’s short with me lately. He’s poisoned her against me. My whole life . . . my . . . everything I hoped for . . .” She shook her head, looked back down at her hands, but I saw the glint on her lash.
An actual tear. A most un-Koepple-like response.
She was a wretched, insincere, sycophantic, pretentious, and completely annoying woman. She had dragged us from bed in order to plant further suspicion on somebody else, and that effort had backfired, at least for me, so that I wondered precisely where she’d been at the moment Tomas Severin plummeted. Maybe Tomas had decided to let his mama do as she liked, to change her will every day if she wanted. Maybe Penelope found out and was enraged.
That would take care of everything. Penelope wouldn’t have to worry about providing for her future because she’d be a guest of the state, and I could sleep late again on Saturday mornings.
But still, watching her plaster-of-paris face work—and fail—to keep its facade, seeing generations of stiff upper lips and straight arrow posture crumple, I felt sorry for the woman. I didn’t want to, but then, you don’t always get what you want.
* * *
Sixteen
* * *
* * *
THAT evening, we met friends, as planned, for a meal out and a movie. The meal was more expensive and less tasty than hoped for, and the movie was the sort that leaves you squinting and headachy, older, and sorry to have once again learned that just because nothing whatsoever happens over the course of a film doesn’t mean it’s art. I thought I might never again attend any movie that had the word “exquisite” in its review.
Still and all, at no point in either real life or the movie did anybody tumble down a staircase, prove to have been drugged, accuse anyone else of murderous impulses, or talk about wedding preparations.
We considered it a fine and jolly outing.
Next morning, nobody phoned before we awoke, and I thought my fortunes had changed and that I was truly in control of a wide-open day. While C.K. studied, I’d get school- and housework done, the cat brushed, e-mail answered, a letter written, and then, and then . . . who knew what else? The possibilities were endless, and the day felt that way, too.
Of course that wasn’t meant to be, but before I knew that, I had settled in to mark papers, contented for once to be doing so as I sat at the oak table, a pot of coffee in front of me, the golden autumn sun flooding the loft, Macavity catching the edge of a sunbeam on the carpet next to me.
That’s when the buzzing began. It’s a sound that digs into and claws the small canals of the ear. It means somebody at ground level wants to visit, so it should be welcoming and pleasant, but it sounds instead like a warning to immediately evacuate the premises.
The only buzzees out and about at this hour would be people I didn’t want to admit or even know, so I ignored the noise until I could no longer stand it, then I left the sunny table and stomped to the door. “Who is it?” I snapped into the intercom.
“Me! Who’d you think?”
“Who’d I think? I thought a serial killer, a Sunday morning drunk or druggie, a thief, a—”
“Are you going to let me in, or are you going to leave me out here until one of those guys really does come along?”
So I let my sister in and listened as the elevator cranked its way up to the top floor of the building.
She opened the door and looked surprised. “Arms across the chest, teach? What did I do?”
“Why did you ask me who else it could have been downstairs?”
“Because it’s me! Because you said you were free and that we’d go look at The Manse.”
“I said that?”
“She said that?” The near-echo was from C.K.
“Of course!” Beth said.
“I said come over on Sunday, Beth, and we’ll go see a mansion?”
“The Manse.”
No way could I imagine wedding invitations that said anything resembling “see you at The Manse” unless it was meant as a joke.
“You didn’t say those words precisely, no,” Beth said. “But on Monday, I asked you when we were going to check the place out, and you said as soon as you had a free day.”
Monday. All I remembered of it was Tomas Severin’s body. It was possible Beth was bamboozling me, but there was no way I could remember what had or hadn’t been said, wedding-wise. And I couldn’t say what I was thinking—that I hadn’t spoken to her Monday because I’d ignored her phone message. That would be opening a separate can of worms.
“And Wednesday,” she continued, “when we were talking, I asked you what your weekend plans were, and you didn’t mention a single thing for today. Therefore—your first free day!”
“The dog that didn’t bark in the night,” I said.
C.K. chuckled. “Ever considered investigation as a sideline, Beth? You’re pretty good puttin’ clues together and noting what wasn’t said.”
“You promised Mom you’d come.” Beth sounded too much the teacher’s pet good-daughter for my liking, but I realized with a sinking sensation that she was probably telling the truth. That must have been what I’d agreed to on the stairs, when my mother had phoned me at school.
Beth’s smile had too much of an edge of self-satisfaction.
“I never realized how wily you are, Beth. How cleverly you set your trap. And if this is a potential wedding site, well, I don’t think I could get married in a place that called itself The Manse.”
“It just means lodging, a house.”
“Oh, please. It means—” But her expression stopped me. Her smile had disappeared, and a crease appeared between her eyebrows. She glanced at C.K., who seemed once again mesmerized by his book and his highlighter, and then she looked around, and back at me. “There’s no place here to be private!” she said in an irritated whisper.
“About what? What’s going on?”
“The bathroom,” she said. “Come with me.”
She reached for me, but I pulled away. “That’s beyond ridiculous. What’s the big secret, and from whom? The only other person here is the one I’m marrying.”
She sighed and sat down at the oak table, back toward Mackenzie, and patted the chair next to her, so that I, too, would be facing away from my intended. When I was seated, she took a deep breath, exhaled, then put her hand atop mine. “We�
��re sisters. I’ll understand. Be honest with me.” She was almost inaudible.
“About what?”
“Shhhh,” she whispered. “About him. About your feelings. It’s well and good to joke about the bride having cold feet, but your feet are frostbitten. You seem upset about so many things, lethargic about so much else, that I realized I haven’t been sufficiently sensitive to what you’re trying to say. So I want you to know that you do not have to—”
Oh joy! She’d gotten it, and it would not be necessary to go through this sea of froufrou to reach the golden shores of matrimony. She was giving me a get out of jail card.
“—marry him.” Her level of earnestness could flatten mountains.
“What?”
“You don’t have to marry him.”
I had to stop and try to rerun the tape, figure out what we’d been saying to each other. “But I want to,” I said. “I like the getting married part.”
“You don’t have to say that. There’s no shame admitting you’ve made a mistake. Even after two people have been together awhile, it can take something like setting the date to realize they’re about to make a mistake. He’s a lovely man, but other people’s opinions shouldn’t color yours in any way. This is about you, and your future, so—”
“Beth, I don’t feel that way.” She sounded as if she’d memorized something from a talk show. “I’m only—”
“Only anything but subtle about your reluctance,” she whispered. “Good Lord—I have to trick you into looking at your own wedding site. And Mom says the same thing about the gown, the invitations, about everything. You said you wanted to plan your own wedding, and yet, you plan nothing. You haven’t registered at a single store. You haven’t even thought about it, have you? What else could it mean? I phoned Sasha this week—”
Till the End of Tom Page 16
