Shadow Notes

by Laurel S. Peterson

  Chapter 6

  I came home at two a.m. with a hangover in the making to a house too empty and quiet, and switched on some Miles Davis for ­company. I poured myself a huge glass of water, kicked off my shoes, and curled up on the couch. The music, or the lingering effects of the alcohol, or my exhaustion from the past couple of days, must have caught up with me because the next thing I knew, light was streaming through the windows, and I had a terrible cramp in my neck.

  At least the gin had anesthetized the dreams, and although my head was fuzzy, I’d slept through the night for the first time in two weeks. I crawled into a sitting position and tried to remember what day it was. Sunday. Today was Hugh’s memorial service. He was gone, but he was still my ticket into my mother’s head. Chief DuPont had given me an idea with his reference to ­keeping files on people, but for it to succeed, I needed camouflage.

  I called Paul, bought bagels, cream cheese, lox, red onions, and the papers; and loaded them into the car alongside a bottle of champagne from Mother’s wine cellar. I needed the bubbles to cheer me up, make the hangover recede—and help persuade my audience.

  Paul and Richard’s walk had been shoveled but not salted. About halfway up, my heel slid into the snow and I ended up in a contorted pose worthy of a Vogue model. I yanked my heel out just as Richard opened the door in his bathrobe. “Hope you can take us au naturel. We’d barely gotten up when you called.” It was almost noon.

  “Another tough week?” I stepped inside and kicked off my shoes to avoid tracking in garden mud and snow. In the kitchen, Paul turned from making coffee to kiss my cheek.

  Richard shook his head and opened one of the bags, inhaling the scent of the warm bread. “Ah…the greatest smell on earth.”

  Paul said, “People are still treating him like he’s contagious. They’ll get over it—”

  “Maybe!” Richard interjected.

  “They’ll get over it,” Paul repeated, “but it’s going to take some time.”

  Richard rolled his eyes. “Pollyanna over there thinks in a few days ­everything will be back to normal, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. I have to figure out how to handle things the way they are now, since that may be the rest of my career at this company.”

  I touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.” I knew what it was like to be ostracized.

  “How about you? Have you learned anything?” Paul pulled mugs from the cupboard while Richard sliced bagels in half.

  “Men are weird and stupid,” I said.

  Paul passed me a plate with his eyebrows raised.

  “Present company excepted,” I amended lamely.

  “We’re so grateful,” said Richard.

  “Where does this earth-shattering revelation come from?”

  I slathered a bagel with cream cheese. “I went to a fundraiser for Andrew Winters last night.”

  “As I recall, you begged Mary Ellen for that privilege.”

  “That, on top of the Women’s League meeting I had to suffer through on Friday makes me very aware of why I’ve avoided them for so long.”

  Richard laughed. “Is your butt black and blue this morning?”

  “Shut up.” I wrinkled my nose at him and took a large bite.

  Paul sat down opposite me. “How is your mother?”

  “Also weird.”

  “Maybe she’s secretly a man?” Richard suggested.

  I almost snorted cream cheese out my nose. Paul handed me another napkin. When I could breathe again, I said, “Actually that’s why I’m here.”

  “Because your mother’s a man?” Richard pretended incredulity.

  “Would you stop?” Paul tapped his hand playfully.

  For I moment, I envied them so deeply it hurt.

  I said, “I need to get into Hugh’s therapy files.”

  Paul shook his head. “Oh, no, Clara. Absolutely not.”

  “Hugh is still the best source for information about my mother—”

  “Except for your mother herself.”

  “Who won’t talk to me, so—”

  “Clara!” Paul’s anger shook me, seemed to shake the whole room. The bright yellow curtains glared at me.

  I stopped, felt my eyes tearing up. Oh joy.

  “You are not above the law.”

  “I’ll return her file after I find out why she might be in danger.”

  “Have you considered the consequences of reading it? Like that you might find out things you don’t want to know? Maybe even about you?”

  “I already know what she thinks of me.”

  “Do you?” he snapped. He got up and starting clearing the table, even though we had barely started eating, his movements agitated and quick. Plates crashed onto the counter, and the refrigerator door slammed shut. He turned around. “You’re trying my patience. If you intend to find out who your mother is, you need to start taking responsibility for yourself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that, for a long time, you’ve blamed your mother for all the ­negative things you feel and do. While she is responsible for initiating some of those patterns in you, you are now an adult and it’s time you thought and behaved as a responsible grown-up.”

  I sat there with my mouth open, even though as a well-bred, upper-class girl, I would never do that.

  Paul held my gaze as his words worked their way through my defenses, like a needle through the layers of a quilt. Mary Ellen said I’d been “just rebelling,” as if I’d had an adolescent temper tantrum. I knew I’d been hiding for the last fifteen years, but I’d also been grieving—for my father, for a childhood, for the kind of family I would never have. And I’d been reconciling myself to a gift I never wanted and that my mother had tried to deny out of me.

  I said, “Thank you for acknowledging that she was responsible for the beginning.” I stopped. I had to say the rest of it, but the breath wouldn’t move over my vocal chords and across my tongue. It was stuck in my chest. I had too much practice sticking things there.

  Richard took my hand again, and that helped.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’ve gotten away for a long time with sidestepping the truth. You’re right,” I repeated, emphasizing it to myself. “But Paul, I’m trying to do the right thing, trying to help her and she won’t listen. I need to know who I am, too. I do care about her, even if I’m not sure what that means, and I’ll do what it takes to make sure she’s safe, even if my actions aren’t within the ethics of your profession or the law.”

  “So you can leave again?”

  “Maybe.” I thought of Paris.

  Paul just shook his head, but when he looked away, Richard squeezed my hand.

  Hugh’s house was in the woods. We arrived right at four, but had trouble parking. The road was narrow, only about a car-and-a-half wide. God forbid two cars going opposite directions should try to pass each other. Someone would have to back up a half mile.

  My town ran the gamut from lavish waterfront estates to hip downtown condos to horse farms to luxurious and discreet hideaways. Hugh’s house was nestled in among the rock slabs that had slid through here during the last ice age. In the summer, shade gardens and a slate patio surrounded a blue-green pool. Today, the pool was tarped and sifted over with snow.

  The slate theme had been carried into the house in the floors of the vestibule and the kitchen, which was at the end of the center hall. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out from the kitchen over the pool deck. To the right and down a step was the living room, carpeted in white. I wondered whether that had been Maria’s decision or Hugh’s. No woman in her right mind would install white carpet; it would be white with a beige path in about six weeks, no matter how good the maid was.

  Rows of chairs faced the fireplace and an elaborate silver music stand. Next to the stand, a small table was set with a white cloth and a
silver-framed picture of Hugh. The house was crowded with people, but each sat nearly silent holding a white rose handed to them by a white-gloved, tuxedoed teenager stationed at the front door. There was definitely a theme here. Who themed a memorial service? Was this the latest trend?

  I tried to remember how to get downstairs to Hugh’s office. It had been a long time since I’d been here, and anxiety about how I was going to get Hugh’s files buzzed in my gut. A silver-haired woman in a white dress stepped to the music stand. Richard, Paul and I hurriedly took roses and found seats.

  “That’s Maria,” Richard whispered.

  “Thank you for coming.” Her voice was melodious and soft, like listening to Madeleine Peyroux sing “Summer Wind.” She was also beautiful. The dress, a fitted woolen sheath, fell just to her knees, accentuating her trim figure and muscular legs. With blue eyes and silver hair almost to her waist, she looked like a gracefully aging Snow White.

  “I want to keep this pretty casual,” she continued. “I see so many people who knew Hugh well. I have a few words to say, but then anyone who wants to talk may. I don’t want to keep you here all afternoon, so if each person could limit their thoughts to a minute or so, I would be grateful.” She paused and seemed to pull some energy from the packed room.

  “Hugh loved this town. He loved the people; he loved the place itself. That someone here brutally murdered him is an outrage I’m having difficulty comprehending. Most of you know Hugh and I loved each other deeply, but chose to live apart. While I don’t regret that decision, I do regret I was not here for him the night he was killed. People say you can’t second-guess life, but I will always second-guess Hugh’s death. If the killer is in this room, I want you to know that I won’t let the police rest until you’re behind bars forever.”

  I looked at Richard and Paul, a little shocked. Is this how people behaved at society funerals these days? Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was out of sync. Paul raised an eyebrow at me and Richard gave a little head shake. Surreptitiously, or at least as surreptitiously as I could, I looked around the room to see who might be counted among the suspects. Everyone else was looking around, too.

  Hetty cowered in her chair at the end of a row, her clogs caked with mud. Andrew and Mary Ellen Winters sat two rows from the front with Andrew’s wife, Jennifer, a blonde with the kind of perfect face only achieved under the surgeon’s knife. A senior lawyer at Bailey’s firm, William Morgan, and his wife, sat in the front row with Nat and Beulah Mueller. Winken, Drinken, and Nod, as I’d nicknamed them, three of my new Women’s League buddies, had settled a couple rows up from the mayor. Winken, I had learned from Paul, was having an affair with her podiatrist, Drinken smelled of gin, and Nod was in serious danger of overdosing on decaf coffee. She must have had eight cups at our two-hour Women’s League meeting. Their real names were Wendy, Darcy, and Nancy, but it was much easier to remember them this way. I knew most of the other people by sight, but my recent self-imposed exile had caused their names to vanish.

  Every one of them looked a little sick. Why would any of them want Hugh dead? What could Hugh possibly have done to anger anyone? The man I remembered was kind, even when he was skewering one’s self-delusions. I shook my head, wondering how I would escape all this to find the file.

  Maria paused for a moment of silence, then took the rose from her hair and laid it in front of Hugh’s framed picture. “Would anyone like to speak?”

  Andrew waved his rose in the air. Of course.

  “We all loved Hugh,” he began, as he made his way to the front of the room, and I wondered if he was making that up or knew it to be true. “When we attended Chumley Academy, we were close, close friends.” I saw Richard give Paul a look. Winters then recited a story about some prank he claimed he and Hugh had pulled involving a goat from a nearby farm and a French teacher. Hetty looked incensed. “Hugh would never have hurt anyone,” Andrew wrapped up. “I, also, will do whatever I can to see that justice is served.”

  Ah—the campaign pitch. He laid his rose in front of Hugh’s picture and returned to his seat. After him came a long line of women, including Winken, Drinken, and Nod, testifying weepily to Hugh’s amazing skill as a therapist.

  I whispered, “Is every woman in this town in therapy?” Was it even possible that Hugh had that many patients?

  Richard answered. “Pretty much.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You grew up here; you should be able to answer that.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “That’s why you left?”

  The afternoon had gradually dimmed, and now at quarter to five, the room was nearly dark. Maria gestured and a girl started lighting the silver and white candles strategically placed around the room’s perimeter. Everyone watched the flames slowly create a sinister glow. Flashes from my dream in the police station flickered across my mind, and panic knotted my intestines. Someone was going to knock one of those candelabras over onto the white carpet; it would ignite and we’d be caught in the inferno, trampling each other in our efforts to get out. I started to rise, but Richard pulled me down.

  Mother had appeared to a collective gasp.

  She wore a white wool suit with a cream shell underneath, and her blonde hair was swept up into a chignon. Wasn’t she in jail? Why would they let her out? I looked around for Chief DuPont or a police escort.

  Mother was speaking. “My daughter and I have many things to be grateful for. Hugh is one of them. He guided me through some of my lowest points and kept me functioning so I could be a mother to Clara.”

  Well, that was startling. We obviously had different perspectives on what mothering was. “Hugh was my closest friend, and he told me everything. He told me who his enemies were. He told me what he was planning.” She paused. “I know who you are,” she hissed. “And I’m going to get you.”

  The room went deadly still. The afternoon light had completely gone, and only candles illuminated the room, wavering as if they were on the Phantom’s pipe organ. I felt Richard tense just as a sudden crash sent the room into chaos. At the end of the row, Winken, in her sudden haste to leave, had knocked over her chair, which fell into one of the candelabras.

  Locked in a panicked dream of a fiery explosion, I watched it wobble over that pristine and flammable rug.

  At the last moment, Nod stabilized it before the candles loosened in their holders. Meanwhile, Winken clutched the scarf at her neck and skittered toward the foyer, her heels catching on the carpet so she stumbled every couple of steps. People kept reaching for her, then pulling back as she righted herself. Others twisted in their chairs and whispered to their neighbors. The man I assumed was her husband half rose, but then subsided, as if weary of such scenes. I heard Hetty squeaking with a sort of mouse-like glee. Seconds later, the front door banged shut. The startled crowd rose as one, as if to sing a final hymn. When I looked for my mother, she had disappeared in the melee.

  My mother, the fugitive. Wouldn’t that be a pretty story on the front page of the local paper.

  Maria got our attention by banging a baton on the music stand. “Thank you for your kind words. The reception is out the door and to your right.” The crowd, responding like Hetty’s sheep, crammed through the doorway, everyone at the same time. This was my chance.

  “Why the hell isn’t she in a psychiatric institution?” Paul derailed me.

  “How the hell did she get out of jail?” I said.

  “Who the hell are we talking about?” Richard said.

  “That woman that just ran out of here, hysterical and drugged to the gills,” Paul said.

  “No, my mother,” I said.

  “I see,” Richard said. “That is an interesting question to ask about your mother.”

  “That would be my doing,” a wry voice said behind me. I turned to face the luscious Kyle DuPont. “Now I’ve got to find her.”

  An image ros
e behind my eyes. “Master bedroom.”

  The chief cocked his head.

  I shrugged. “I just know that’s where she is.”

  He turned without a word and made his way through the crowd. A few minutes later, when everyone had squished into the kitchen, he came back, towing her. He looked furious.

  She had that way about her.

  He nodded at Paul and Richard. “Would you gentlemen excuse us?”

  Richard touched my shoulder. “We’ll be near the food.” I hoped it lasted long enough for me to get into Hugh’s office. With that crowd ravaging the buffet table, I might not have more than fifteen minutes, and I didn’t know how long it would take me to find what I was looking for. I couldn’t do many more sleepless nights, or nights where I drank enough to keep the dreams at bay. I had started to feel the darkness pressing at the edges of me.

  The chief told my mother to sit and she did. “Your mother has something to say,” he growled.

  Mother didn’t look the least bit cowed, but she didn’t like his anger, as if she found it an excess of emotion under the circumstances. She looked at him for a moment to indicate that she was speaking of her own free will. The chief was unfazed. Maybe she’d met her match. Wouldn’t that be fun to watch.

  “Clara, Chief DuPont was kind enough to allow me to come this afternoon to say goodbye to Hugh, but it seems he frowns on my using myself as bait to catch a killer.”

  I looked at the chief. “Which means what?”

  “Your mother’s lawyer was attempting to negotiate bail, but her performance just now puts an end to that.”

  “Do you really know who did it?” I said to my mother. “Why don’t you just tell them?”

  “Stay out of this, Clara. You’re making it worse.”