“She doesn’t know,” Kyle said.
“But—”
“I know what she implied. Your mother has been telling us a great deal.” He held up his hand to stop her from interrupting. “Whether it’s unfounded accusations and supposition, or not, we are investigating.”
“Who does she think murdered Hugh?” I was incredulous. This was so like my mother.
“That’s between your mother and the police.”
“You shouldn’t talk about me in third person,” my mother said. “It’s impolite.”
If the chief had been a teakettle, the whistle would have screeched. He took her arm, forced her to stand. She managed it gracefully—almost. He said to me, “If someone thinks your mother knows something, they may also think she’s told you. Lock all your doors, set your alarm, buy a dog, whatever. You might even stay with friends for a while.”
He tossed all this off rather casually as I followed them to the foyer. He pulled my mother’s coat off the rack and handed it to her. Without waiting for her to put it on, he escorted her out the door into a silver and white winter afternoon that didn’t have a chance of dousing the fire started here.
Chapter 7
Somehow I made it into the kitchen and found Richard in the press of people while managing to avoid Hetty, Drinken—who appeared to be on her second glass of wine already—Nod, and a half dozen others who wanted to be the first to know what Mother knew.
He shoved a plate of food into my hand and whispered, “What happened? You look like shit.”
“The chief was tactful but said she was blowing smoke up our asses.”
“What do you think? Does she know anything?”
I took a bite of shrimp. It tasted bitter and metallic, and I put it back on the plate. “How would I know?”
I’d said that phrase more in the past week than I’d said it in my entire life. “The chief thinks it may make whoever did do it come after me. He told me to get a dog. I hadn’t counted on being a target.”
Richard drew me over to the window and put his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s see if we can find a bathroom, maybe get you feeling a little better, a little more in control,” he said. “You don’t look so good.”
In the window’s reflection, his dark hair and black turtleneck disappeared into the darkness outside, leaving his pale face floating like something barely glimpsed under a wash of dark water.
“Are you sure? I mean, Paul…”
“I’ll stand watch,” he said.
I looked around for Paul, but he was listening to Drinken warble on about some party she’d been to last night. The next thing I knew we’d ducked under the police tape downstairs. Richard pulled his leather driving gloves out of his pocket and handed them to me. “I’ll wait here,” he said. “If I hear someone coming, I’ll get you out.”
I slid the door shut behind me. Hugh’s therapy suite was lit only by the displays from the digital clocks on various pieces of equipment, as well as the glow from a switch on a power strip. Light from the outdoor spots shone through the glass doors that led to a small patio. I allowed my eyes to adjust and tried not to feel creeped out by the slightly green cast these lights gave to the room.
Jammed bookcases shadowed the walls around the fireplace. I didn’t want to get too close to that part of the room anyway. I wondered if Maria had had the carpet cleaned yet, or if Hugh’s blood still stained it. I shuddered, looked away, tried not to conjure an image of Hugh with his head cracked open. Was that odd smell his blood—or was I imagining it?
His desk faced the windows, no computer. I suspected it was probably being abused by a computer forensics expert. I couldn’t see any filing cabinets, but he had to have paper notes, right? Doors opened to a bathroom, a hallway, and a small room with a copier, supplies, and file cabinets whose edges glinted like cat’s eyes. I pulled the door to the supply room shut behind me, hoping I would hear Richard if he sent a warning, and turned on the light.
My heart pounding, I pulled open the top drawer of the first cabinet. Perfect. Patient files. The third drawer down held the M’s. While the copier next to me suggested an alternative to “borrowing,” Mother’s file was too fat to copy, and someone would notice if I walked out with a huge envelope in my purse. Could I take part of it? What part would be most useful?
I suddenly felt seedy. How would I feel if someone read my file from that Swiss hospital? Even if their intention was to help me, I wouldn’t understand and neither would Mother. I stood paralyzed, then set the file down to check out the second file cabinet. It held a second set of patient files. I pulled out another file with Mother’s name on it and, puzzled, flipped the covers back to compare the contents.
The first file contained DSM diagnostic codes, session notes, a list of prescribed medications, behavioral changes and so on. The second contained pages of prose. Its dates corresponded with the first file. Why would there be two? Quickly, I put the first one back and kept the second. I’d deal with my ethics later. I shut the drawers, grabbed an envelope from the stacks of office supplies and shoved the file in. I snapped out the light and cracked open the door only to hear Richard say, “I was curious, Officer, but I haven’t touched anything. I didn’t even know the police had posted a guard. Is that only for the party?”
The cop’s response was muffled, but Richard’s message was clear. I tiptoed to the glass doors. Installed with metal tracks, they might scrape open, but I had to risk it or sleep where Hugh was killed, and I was already freaked out enough.
Richard, bless him, was still chatting up the guard. I clicked the lock open and pulled slowly. No luck. The door squawked. I yanked it and ran, my heels slipping on the snow-covered slate. I fell to one knee, the file skittering out of my hands. Behind me, I heard the inner door slam open and the guard shout. I scrambled up, grabbed the file, and skidded around to the front of the house as a group of people came out the front door. I inserted myself into their posse as if I’d walked out with them, brushing at the snow on my hands. Richard appeared magically behind me carrying my coat, which he casually draped over the envelope in my arms. “I’ll call Paul later,” he muttered, shepherding me toward the car. He had just turned the key in the ignition when the back door opened and Paul got in. “Leaving me behind?”
“Shut the door,” Richard growled. The cop was headed down the path toward us, waving his flashlight like a baton. “Stop the car,” he yelled.
Richard pretended not to hear him, but he couldn’t go anywhere until the Mercedes in front of us moved, and the Mercedes couldn’t move until the Lincoln Navigator in front of it finished maneuvering out of its parking space. The officer started to run. He shouted, “I’ve got your license plate number.”
“Did you steal her file?” demanded Paul, peering over the front seat at the envelope. “Hand it over.”
“That cop can’t see me giving you anything.”
“Put it around the seat. Hurry!”
I slipped the envelope between the door and the front seat. Paul yanked it through.
“What are you doing!”
“Pretending to be the therapist I am.” He pulled the file out and started flipping pages. “You’ve taken his shadow notes.”
“Shadow notes?”
“Process notes for his use only. Stuff that he’s kept out of the public record.”
The officer tapped on my window.
“We’re busted. Chief DuPont is going to kill me,” I whispered.
Paul lowered the back window. “Yes, officer? Can I help you?”
“Step out of the car. All of you.”
“Whatever for?”
The cop looked at me. “Ms. Montague knows what for.”
“Clara?” Paul looked shocked. “Really, officer. She just lost a close family friend. Can’t it wait?”
“Step out of the car, folks.”
Ric
hard put the car in park, opened the door and stepped out. He’d managed to swing it partly into traffic behind the Mercedes, which now could accelerate away, since the Lincoln had finally gotten itself extricated. The BMW behind us honked, trying to edge by. Richard had pulled out just far enough to block him. A long line of cars joined the chorus. The officer looked exasperated. “Sir, you’ll have to move your car, so traffic can move.”
“You told me to step out of the car.”
“Don’t be difficult, sir.”
The officer, McNulty according to his name tag, extended his hand to Paul. “I’ll take that file, thanks.”
“These are confidential notes on a therapy patient.”
“I believe Ms. Montague took them from Dr. Woodward’s files downstairs.”
“Do you have proof of that?”
“I have enough. You’ll need to come down to the station and tell Chief DuPont why you were rooting around in Dr. Woodward’s confidential files in a crime scene.” The chorus of horns sounded like a symphony of coked-up ducks. “Ms. Montague can ride with me, and you can follow behind.”
I felt sick. The chief listened to Officer McNulty’s story and put me in a cell across the aisle from Mother. Bailey reassured me it would take a couple hours at most to get me out, but I felt as trapped as I had when I lived at home, before father died. Why was it so easy for me to slip back into that feeling—as if coming home immediately shaved off adulthood and left me an awkward and desperate ten-year-old trying to figure it all out. Sometimes, I felt as though I were a blank space in the room. Mother could see everyone else, hear them, interact with them, but I was the margins at the edge of the page, the spaces between the type, the negative shape in the painting: there but not; there but only if you knew how to look.
She only saw me, it seemed, when she was angry, and she was angry now. Although she held back everything else, she never held back her anger. As a child, it took me days to get back into her good graces. Transgressions as minor as wearing the wrong clothes or addressing a maid in the wrong tone of voice would set her off. I wondered now about the benefit of those good graces. It never seemed to soften the critical spotlight she aimed in my direction, harshly illuminating every flaw she could find, as if pointing them out might make me become what she wanted.
She gripped the bars across the way, holding herself rigidly upright, and let fly: “Really, Clara. What did you think you were doing?” Each word had an exclamation point after it.
Sitting in the cell’s one wooden chair, I spoke past the knots in my stomach. “You refuse to talk to me.”
“Don’t think that’s going to change—not with impulsive behavior like this from you.” It was a relatively minor hit, given Mother’s capabilities.
I snapped back. “Unlike you getting up at a memorial service and claiming you knew who the killer was? Making us both targets? I’m sure you thought through the consequences of that carefully, especially since I was the one exposed, while you’re cozy in your safe little cell.” I’d learned from the best.
The edges of her anger softened, surprising me. “Oh, Clara. This won’t do us any good. Why did you come home? Why now, after all this time?”
I bit my lip and went for it. “I’m having dreams. About you. Just like the ones I had about father.”
She turned her face away. “Not this again. Clara, dreams don’t mean anything. They’re the body’s way of warming the mind up for the day. Look it up. The New York Times “Science” section did an article on it a year or so ago.”
“I know you don’t believe that. Why would you have me talk to Paul about fire?”
She unhooked one hand from the bars and rubbed her forehead, as if erasing a headache.
I said, “There’s something wrong. You need to let me help.”
“Why do you think you, of all people, can solve it?”
I felt myself redden, as if I were a fifteen-year-old being dressed down by the principal for skipping classes. “I won’t know until you tell me the problem.”
Agitated, she started to pace, then seemed to think better of it. “Why would I want to be helped by someone who has shown so little interest in me over the past fifteen years that she couldn’t even bother to remember my birthday? Who hasn’t come home to see me once, even though she’s been in town to see her friends?”
She must have seen something on my face. “Oh, yes. You thought I didn’t know? This is a small town. Everybody talks, and the people who don’t like me talk the loudest. Just leave. Go back to Spain and that cyclist husband of yours, and try to make it work.”
“How did you—”
She waved her hand in disdain. “Don’t kid yourself. So he wants to ride bicycles. So what? You said ‘for better or for worse,’ and this is the ‘for worse’ part—and it’s nothing, as far as ‘for worses’ go. I don’t need you here, and your being here is only making things more complicated.”
Good to know the same woman who could bite my heart from my chest and spit it out in pieces was still there. I tried to calm myself by concentrating on my breathing, like the Berne therapist had taught me. Mother went to the cell door and rattled it. “Guard!”
He ambled over. “You need something, Mrs. Montague?”
“My daughter’s done here. You can let her out.”
“No, ma’am. Chief DuPont says she’s in for the night.”
“For the night!” I stood. “You’re kidding. He can’t hold me overnight. There aren’t any charges.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” He strolled away before we could protest further, his boots thumping down the concrete hallway.
I looked around the cell. No doubt Mother’s was identical. Decorators would call this gray on gray: gray walls, gray floors, gray blankets on gray bunks. No reading material, no make-up, no clean underwear, nothing to do but stare at the walls or talk. Maybe the latter was what the chief had in mind, but he didn’t know Mother. She had practiced the great shut-out for all thirty-four years of my life, and that’s what she did now. I waited until I could hear her gentle snores from across the corridor before I let myself cry.
In the morning, Chief DuPont himself unlocked the cell, Bailey trailing behind like a slug on a leaf. Have you out in a couple of hours. Yeah, right.
I’m not at my best in the morning.
I’d had a mostly sleepless night. Falling asleep too deeply meant I might dream and cry out in my sleep, so this morning, everything seemed unfocused and hard to understand. Noises were too loud, and colors, even the gray, too bright.
The chief grabbed my arm and steered me down the hall toward the door. Bailey stayed to talk to Mother. He said, “Be grateful there are no charges pending, Ms. Montague. And go home, lock your doors and stay there. Do not leave, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Are we clear?”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Did she tell you anything about Hugh or what happened that night?”
“She never tells me anything. I don’t know what you thought you could accomplish with that little stunt, but getting her to talk to me isn’t possible.”
“I was actually hoping it would be the other way around, that she’d talk some sense into you. Leave the investigation to the professionals. I’ll say this slowly so you get it. It is a felony to suppress, by an act of concealment, alteration or destruction, any physical evidence which might aid in the discovery or apprehension of a criminal. Got it?”
After a night of Mother scraping at me like a vegetable peeler, I had no stamina left. I’ll tolerate that tone of voice from Mother, but I didn’t have to take it from anyone else. I turned around and walked out.
I drove home fuming. Everyone seemed to think they knew what was best for me: Lock myself in tight to avoid the bogeyman; stop asking questions; don’t read the file that could provide me with answers; go back to Spain and patch it
up with my husband. No one seemed to think I had a brain or valid reasons for my choices. The only person on my side was Richard; when I finally got my phone back, he’d left five messages. I left a reply on his voicemail.
I walked upstairs to my mother’s bedroom, her sanctuary. The bed was draped with lush, heavy silks; gold and cream pillows banked the wall, and a heavy hand-woven cotton blanket adorned the foot. Ornate Georgian armoires on the bisque-colored carpet held her sweaters and lingerie while dark-paneled closet doors hid acres of beautiful clothes and shoes. A reading chair in crushed red velvet looked out the long window. A small table by its side held a stack of my mother’s books. I scanned the titles: Instead of the mysteries she’d read when I was a child, the headings now ran to things like: Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experience; and Silencing the Self: Women and Depression. They barely registered. I was so tired from not sleeping all night.
I sat on the bed, took off my shoes, and pulled the covers over me. I sank into the pillows and closed my eyes. The monsters of darkness rose up to greet me. I was running through the field, that endless green field with the black, roiling cloud at my back, running for Mother. Only she wasn’t there, and the cloud was coming for me, and the blackness wasn’t black at all, it was blood, and the blood rained on me, covering me in its slick and greasy dampness. It fell on my shoulders, slithered down my back, coated my legs, made the ground slippery, and I fell to my knees as it pressed down closer and closer over me. Light as a whisper, it drifted across my cheek, first one cheek and then the other, as if it were a finger tracing the line of a bone.
I woke, screaming. When I turned over to catch my breath, I found two small cloth dolls, crudely made and dressed in a patchwork of fabrics, beside me on the pillow. Pasted on the boy doll was a picture of Hugh; pasted on the tiny face of the girl was a picture of me. Punched through their tiny hearts were two large hat pins.
Chapter 8
I slithered out of bed carefully so as not to disturb the dolls, called the police and dressed quickly. Even though it was well past winter sunset, I made a double espresso while I waited for the patrol car.
Shadow Notes Page 6
