“I didn’t mean that, it’s just such a shock. How did it happen?”
I told him about the murder and then summarized the investigation by saying the police appeared to have no suspects and no leads.
“Holy shit,” he said when I finished.
I could see that six weeks of European culture had not done a lot to smooth Andy’s rough edges, but something in his tone brought back to me, very vividly, an image of the Andy I had fallen in love with. “See what happens when you run off,” I teased. “You miss all the excitement of living in Walnut Hills.”
“That’s not all I missed,” he said softly.
“Oh?”
He laughed. “Right, ‘Oh.’ ”
“There’s more,” I said, reverting to safe ground. “Turns out she was having an affair. I found out just today the man she was seeing was Jim.”
“Hmm.” Andy coughed lightly, the laughter gone.
“You knew?”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Well, yes.”
I was incredulous. “You knew Jim was cheating on his wife, my best friend, and yet we’d all get together for dinner and kid around as if nothing had happened? You even sympathized with Daria about Jim’s hectic schedule.”
“Listen, Kate, everybody has their own style. And Jim is my friend. You don’t judge friends.” His voice had a clipped, condescending edge to it. “Nothing was going to come of it anyway.”
“You mean Jim’s conscience was catching up with him?”
“No, Pepper wouldn’t divorce Robert, if you can believe that. A guy like Jim has the hots for her—wants to marry her—and she opts for money, a pampered life and marriage to Robert.”
“Maybe she loved him.”
“Don’t make me laugh. She wanted a sugar daddy, and there was no way Jim could compete there. Anyway, she finally put a halt to it, said Jim was putting too much pressure on her. He told me a couple of weeks ago, right after she broke off with him. God, the guy was hurt And humiliated. I mean here he is, head over heels in love with her, and it turns out she’s just out for a good time.”
“A couple of weeks ago?”
“Yeah. Must have been about a week before she was killed, now that I think of it.”
“He told you this?”
There was a long moment of silence; then Andy cleared his throat. “I called him, wanted to sort of touch base with things at home.”
“You called Jim a couple of weeks ago, but not me? You didn’t even write me a letter.”
“Hey, you know I needed to work some things out.”
I felt a prickly sensation at the back of my neck. “And have you?”
“I’m not sure.” His voice sounded hollow. “But I’m coming back. I should be there in about a week. There are a few loose ends around here I need to wind up first”
I wondered if one of those loose ends was an Italian model posing as a cousin. “Why come home if you’re not sure?”
“I’ve missed you and Anna.” He paused, waiting for me to respond, and when I didn’t, he took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be,” he said finally, “but I’m willing to give it another shot.”
“Give it another shot? You make it sound like you’re trying to unstop the kitchen drain.” All the hurt I’d tucked away, trying to pretend it didn’t exist, suddenly dropped like a heavy metal ball to the pit of my stomach. “Nothing’s going to be any different unless you really want it to be. Unless you care enough to work hard to make it happen.”
“Don’t start in on me already, Kate. We’ll talk when I get there.”
“I had a miscarriage,” I said, blurting out the words before the thought had fully formed in my mind.
Andy was quiet a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “that’s one thing we won’t have to deal with.”
“That’s it?” My voice sort of squeaked, but I don’t think Andy noticed.
“Look, Kate, I know you want another baby, but this isn’t the right time. That’s got to be pretty obvious.”
Nothing had changed. That was pretty obvious.
<><><>
Anna danced around the room when I announced that Andy would be coming home. “But it might only be for a visit,” I warned. “He might not stay.”
“But why not?”
I pulled her onto my lap. “It has nothing to do with you, honey. Daddy loves you very much, and he misses you.”
Tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear, I took a deep breath and tried to explain something I was having trouble understanding myself—how the wonderful, loving feelings that brought people together initially could sometimes wither to indifference. “It’s sad,” I told her, “but wishing it weren’t so doesn’t change a thing; wishing just isn’t enough.”
Anna raised her head and scowled. “Still,” she insisted, abruptly jumping from my lap and continuing her twirling about the room, “it will be nice to have Daddy back home, won’t it?”
For the rest of the afternoon she busied herself making cards and pictures to welcome Andy back. “If he knows how much we missed him,” she said, looking at me with wide, serious eyes, “maybe he won’t leave again.”
My chest grew tight watching her.
When Michael called later that evening, asking to drop by, I begged off. “I’m not up to company right now.”
“I’m hardly company,” he chided. “Just for an hour or so.”
“I’m tired.”
“I’ll rub your back. You don’t even have to talk. Ever since this morning, when I woke up next to that warm, sweet, beautiful body of yours, I’ve been walking around with a silly grin on my face. I just want to make sure I wasn’t imagining it all.”
“Back off, will you?” I snapped. “I said I was tired.” There was a long, uneasy silence, during which I made a few mental stabs at explaining, but I could never find the right words. Finally Michael said, “Okay, maybe tomorrow then,” and hung up.
When I eventually climbed into bed, I couldn’t sleep. One after another, in rapid succession, memories flipped through my brain, like a movie stuck on fast forward. And the bed that last night had been so warm and comfy, now seemed uncommonly cold.
In the morning, when the gray light of dawn began leaking through the cracks in the curtains, I heard Anna pad down the hall to my room, where she slipped silently under the covers and nestled against me. In less than a minute, we were both asleep.
<><><>
Anna wanted me to park the car around the comer from the school so that no one would be able to see her arriving in “that heap.” She asked me over breakfast and then again as we approached the parking lot.
“Listen,” I told her, “there are lots of children with families that don’t even own a car. They’re thankful if they can afford bus fare.” Anna scowled and wiggled lower in her seat. “Some of them,” I added, speaking slowly for emphasis, “don’t even have houses to live in or food to eat.”
She tugged at her sock and ventured one quick peek out the side window. “But we have a car.”
Wearily, I parked—right smack in front of the school. When I’d assured her the coast was clear, Anna opened the door and climbed quickly out.
“Remember,” I said as we walked into the building, “you’re going home with Kimberly today because I’m going out with Daria after work. I’ll pick you up as soon as I can.”
“Mrs. Marsh has a nice car.”
I kissed her, handing over her lunch box. “Have a nice day, sweetie. And if anybody asks, you can tell them ours is a special, magical car.”
Outside I met up with Tina, who had just dropped off Zachary. “Did you manage to find a baby sitter?” she asked me. “I asked around for you but most everyone was full up.”
“I’ve got a temporary arrangement with Kimberly’s sitter, and once school is out Heather will be available.”
“Sorry I couldn’t help you out. I would have liked to. Be nice to care for a little girl now and
then.”
Given Anna’s recent snooty drift, I thought a boy’s boisterousness might be preferable. “That’s okay,” I told her, “I appreciate your looking.”
We walked to the parking lot, where Tina stopped so abruptly I had to do a little shuffle to avoid running into her.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“That car.” She pointed to my colorful clunker.
“Quite something to look at, isn’t it? But it runs well.”
She pivoted quickly to face me. “It’s yours?”
“Only for a couple of days, I hope. It’s from the auto shop. My Datsun needs a new engine. Given what it’s going to cost to have mine fixed, maybe I ought to see about a permanent swap.” I opened the door and climbed in. “I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for work.”
With Tina standing woodenly by the curb, I drove off, stopping by the bakery to pick up croissants and lattes to share with Daria. After considerable deliberation I’d made up my mind to say nothing about Jim’s philandering. In the first place, it was over. Knowing about it would only hurt her. More than that really. Daria was the sort who would be destroyed by infidelity. Anyway, she and Jim were off to Mexico next week—Jim’s idea—so maybe he’d decided to make amends.
Then, too, there was that little issue of casting stones when you, yourself, were not without sin, though I suppose it could be argued that since Andy had left me, my situation was a different. Still, I thought I was hardly in a position to judge Jim too harshly. So it was business as usual, but that didn’t stop me from feeling more than a little uncomfortable about coming face to face with Daria.
She seemed to notice nothing unusual, however. She greeted me with her usual warm but distracted manner. “How’s the car repair business?”
“Expensive.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” She finally looked up from the stack of papers she was sorting. “Oh, goody, I’m starved. You’re such a doll to think of this.” Popping off the plastic lid, she took a sip of coffee, licking the white foam with her tongue. “I feel so bad for you, as if you don’t have enough to worry about already, and now this thing with your car.”
“I’ll manage somehow. At the moment, and much to Anna’s chagrin, I’ve got your hand-me-down.”
She looked confused.
“The multi-toned clunker Jim had a couple of weeks ago when his car was in the shop.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I rode in it, remember? When we went to the Guild Wine Festival.”
“Oh, that’s right, you did.” Her mouth relaxed into a smile. “Seems like everyone in Walnut Hills has driven that car at one time or another.”
I finished my croissant and tossed the bag into the garbage, then started for the back room where I was unpacking a shipment of hand-blown glass.
“I’ve been thinking,” Daria said in that slow, deliberate way of hers. “Maybe you should get serious about your painting. We could carry your things here as a start. That piece Sondra bought is really very good.”
Daria did not hand out compliments readily, so I was pleased she liked the painting but wasn’t so sure about the offer. “I don’t know, I’ve never thought about painting professionally.”
“Well, think about it. You’ve got talent, Kate, and that’s rarer than you’d think.” Standing, she ran her fingers through her thick curls and laughed. “In the meantime, you’ll have to handle things here while I run into the city for a couple of hours.”
As soon as Daria left, I placed a call to Michael who, it turned out, was “unavailable.” Since the receptionist had asked for my name before checking, I thought perhaps he was angry with me, as he had every reason to be. But I left my name anyway and then set about addressing a stack of fliers while I readied myself to answer questions from customers.
But there weren’t many, customers or questions. A middle-aged man with a cherubic face and carefully manicured nails bought a ceramic vase for two hundred dollars, but his only questions were “How much?” and “This is something you put flowers in, right?”
When he left, two women entered—one about my age, the other a generation older. The older woman, who wore a turquoise polyester pantsuit, tittered and scoffed while her younger companion looked uncomfortable.
“Look at these prices,” she said. “Who in the world ever buys this stuff? Back home a place like this would be laughed out of town.”
The younger woman smiled blandly. “That’s why you live in Kansas, Mother, and I live in California.”
The person who asked the most questions was a young man sporting an American flag tattoo on one arm and a ponytail. He wanted to place a collection box and a small poster that read Drug-Free Kids by the door.
“I’ll have to ask the owner,” I told him. “She’s not here at the moment.”
“Can’t you agree to something like this yourself? It’s for a good cause.”
“She might not like the idea.”
“How can you not like the idea of keeping kids off drugs?”
“It’s not that. She might think asking for change is . . . well, tacky.”
“Tacky? She sells stuff costing hundreds and thousands of dollars, and she thinks asking customers for a quarter to fight drugs is tacky?”
“I didn’t say that was what she thought, I merely said it was what she might think.” And in fact would think, I was pretty sure. Daria had already said no to posting a sign about missing children. This was a gallery, she told me, not a convenience store.
The young man would have stayed around to badger me, which he seemed to enjoy doing, if Tina hadn’t shown up and stood uncertainly by the entrance.
“Come in,” I called to her as the young man shuffled past on his way out the door. “Can I help you find something or would you prefer to browse?”
She shook her head. “Actually, I came to talk to you.”
“Is something wrong?” I thought instantly of dozens of things that could be. Some pretty horrible—stealing, drugs, child abuse; some not so horrible but still fairly disturbing. Maybe Anna was being mean to Zachary. Or mean to everyone. The terror of preschool. And nobody wanted to confront me with it.
“Are we alone?” she asked, looking around like a conspirator in a grade-B movie.
I nodded.
“That car you’re driving . . .”
I nodded again.
“It’s the car I saw that night.”
“What night?”
“The night Mrs. Livingston was killed. Remember I told you about it that day in the park when Zachary scraped his knee. How I couldn’t sleep that night because it was so hot, and how I went to the window for air?”
I did recall, vaguely.
“There was a car parked across the street by the Dumpster. The same car you’re driving now.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know it was the same car because I thought maybe it belonged to one of the workmen. It looks like the kind they drive, you know, beat up and all, and I was trying to figure out what it would be doing there in the dark of night. Then I saw someone come walking down the street, way off on the shoulder, step behind the Dumpster before getting in the car and driving off.”
“What time was this, do you remember?”
“Oh, yes. I looked at the clock just before I got out of bed. It was one o’clock exactly.”
“Did you see what this person looked like?”
“No, it was too dark, and the person stayed in the shadows. All I saw was a dark shape.”
The day and hour of Pepper’s murder. Her jewelry found in the Dumpster. The car in all likelihood was driven by the killer.
An acid taste rose in my throat. “Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“I sort of forgot about it until I saw the car this morning.” She stared at her shoes for a moment before continuing, her voice almost a whisper. “And I didn’t want to create trouble. I’m only here on a tourist visa. I was supposed to leave months ago. If the polic
e find out, I’m afraid they’ll send me home. My family needs the money I send them.” Her mouth quivered, and she looked as though she might at any moment break into tears. “But I should have said something before now, I know. I did rather like Mrs. Livingston.”
I reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s okay, Tina. Sometimes it’s not easy to know what’s right.”
She nodded.
“But you’re sure it was the same car?”
“Absolutely.”
I did some quick calculations, but I knew the answer before I finished. I knew who had the car that night—the same person who’d had it four days later when he gave me a ride to the Wine Festival. The same person who was hurt and angered by Pepper’s refusal to divorce Robert. The man who’d been humiliated by the woman he loved.
You don’t know for sure, I told myself. There could be a logical explanation. But I knew I would have to tell the police, and I also knew that I would have to tell Daria—at least enough so that the police wouldn’t spring it on her from out of the blue. I owed her that much, friend to friend.
Chapter 21
While I was sorting through my options, the phone rang.
“I have a message here that you called,” Michael said. His voice was flat, and very businesslike.
“I wanted to apologize for last night.”
“No need. You’re entitled to your own life.”
“But you’re part of my life. An important part,” I added, in what I hoped was an appropriately contrite tone. “It had been a horrible day and . . . oh, Michael, I don’t know why I was so short with you, but I’m sorry. I feel awful about it.”
I half expected a thank-you-for-calling kind of reply, pleasant but cool. Instead Michael laughed. A warm, rich, wonderful sound that made my skin tingle. “I was afraid you were calling to tell me to get lost once and for all.”
“You’re not angry then?”
“Just at myself. If I come on too strong, it’s only because I’m crazy about you and I want you to feel the same way about me.”
I do, I wanted to tell him. So much so that it scares me. Instead, I responded with one of those all-purpose, mechanical laughs and asked, “How about dinner tonight? I’m going out for a drink with Daria right after work, but I should be home by seven. No frozen pizza, I promise.”
Murder Among Neighbors (The Kate Austen Mystery Series) Page 23
