Familiar Friend

by Cristina Sumners

  Escape. Wouldn’t it be lovely. Just to vanish. Just to slip out on a night like this, and not come back. A night like this, Tracy thought, noticing it for the first time. Yes, if one wanted to vanish, this would be a perfect night for it. There was something fresh and wicked about the air. The trees were doing subtle little dances in the breeze, uttering soft susurrations to one another.

  She was walking along Stocker Street from Augustine Institute, and turned to take her usual shortcut on the single-lane driveway that cut through the grounds of her parish church, St. Margaret’s. As she got farther from the streetlight behind her on Stocker Street, the night darkened around her. Her impression of the supernatural quality of her surroundings intensified. Yes, this was a night for vanishing. Plenty of shadows to disappear into. No, that wasn’t a shadow; that was somebody disappearing into one. No. Yes? Hard to say. Her imagination, probably. And that lump in the driveway ahead was not a lump, it was just another shadow.

  The leaves rustled, and all the shadows moved, and things that his grandmother would have called leprechauns played just outside the circles of the streetlights. But Sergeant Flannery was deep inside the building, and ample amounts of brick and glass shielded him from the sort of weather that could provoke such fantasies. Not that it mattered. Sergeant Flannery would not be brought to contemplate the existence of leprechauns were an army of them to stomp across his desk. No, Sergeant Flannery’s fantasies did not run in that direction. They ran straight home to his wife.

  She’d have a fire going, now, and would bring him a hot toddy. And she’d be wearing that new robe, that pink thing. He liked that pink robe. Damn night duty anyway. Especially night duty at the desk. Talk about dull. Not that days were that exciting. In a town this size, a traffic fatality was a major event. Oh, God, that last one. No, better to be dull than that. Not the thing to think about. Think about Nancy.

  His gaze wandered over the deserted lobby of City Hall. The Police Department was separated from the lobby only by a thick glass wall, and from the desk Sergeant Flannery had an excellent view of lots of modern sofas and potted plants. It was a scene he knew by heart. But suppose Nancy were to come in. Just to say hi. Just to bring him some cookies. Just to give him a kiss. Suppose she came to one of the front doors over there, and pushed it open. She’d walk across the lobby toward him, smiling. She wouldn’t say anything, because the glass wall would be between them. But she’d walk across, smiling…

  She was running.

  He shook off his drowsiness and sat up straight, frowning. A girl—no, a young woman—was running across the lobby toward him, and she was plainly terrified. She wrenched open the glass door, stumbled into the room, and clutched at the front edge of the desk for support.

  “There’s a body,” she gasped. “At least I think it’s a body. I mean, I think he’s dead. He must be dead. In the driveway—the St. Margaret’s Church driveway—”

  “Now, now,” said the sergeant, coming out from behind the desk to pat her on the shoulder. “Calm down. You want a drink of water? It’s probably just a drunk, you know, passed out on the ground. We get ’em sometimes like that.”

  Tracy shook her head emphatically. “No,” she said.

  The Sergeant smiled tolerantly. “You got a lot of experience with dead bodies?”

  “No,” Tracy admitted.

  “Then what makes you so sure this guy isn’t a passed-out wino?”

  “There’s a knife in his back.”

  “No shit,” said Sergeant Flannery, who never said things like that in front of ladies.

  It was only about forty yards from the front door of City Hall back to the church driveway, but Tracy found her legs unsteady, and it seemed like a long walk. She was leading a couple of highly interested policemen back to where she’d seen it. Good Lord, suppose it wasn’t there? Could she have imagined it? Anything was possible, with this night full of whispering leaves and restless shadows.

  The leaves whispered, and the shadows moved, and the sharp air carried hints of fireside tales of creatures that you never glimpse. Kathryn, numb from hours of tension and dizzy with fatigue, stood motionless at her front door, feeling the soft sting of the air against her face.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, “Mother of All Beauty, it is too fine a night, too witchy a night, to feel as ragged as I feel.” Instead of entering the house immediately, however, she turned her back to the door and leaned against it, savoring the cold, and whispering a fragment of one of the Prayer Book canticles: “O ye stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord, Praise Him and highly exalt Him for ever; O ye dews and frosts, bless ye the Lord—” Suddenly she chuckled and said in a somewhat louder voice, “O ye ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, bless ye the Lord! O ye things that go bump in the night, praise Him and highly exalt Him for ever!

  “O.K., Koerney, that’s it for you for the night,” she scolded herself, turning and dragging her keys out of her pocket.

  She entered the house, shrugged off her coat and hung it on the newel post, then scowled at her reflection in the front hall mirror. “My dear,” she said, “for a clergybeing, you are a sorry sight.” She fumbled with her collar buttons. “Fie on the Methodists anyway for inventing these damn-fool things,” she muttered, tossing the buttons and the stiff white collar into the cut-glass bowl on the table under the mirror. She began to take the bobby pins out of the remains of a braided twist at the back of her neck. She had added three pins to the collection in the bowl when a formidable matron came surging down the stairs.

  “Kathryn? My dear, do you know what time it is?”

  “No, Warby, but I don’t suppose it could be much later than two A.M.”

  “No, seriously—it’s after ten! Have you had anything to eat?”

  “I got a sandwich out of a machine at the hospital while the doctor was checking him over.”

  “How is the boy?”

  “O.K. now, I think. They gave him a sedative, and put him in a room without sharp things or cords or anything. I’m mostly worried about what the Seminary will do. Do Presbyterian seminaries keep people who’ve tried to kill themselves?”

  “My dear, I don’t know! Ask somebody at the Seminary. But do you think, after this, that he’ll want to? Go on with it, I mean?”

  “I don’t know what he’ll want, and frankly, after four hours, I’m too tired to care. I’ll pick it up again tomorrow. Meanwhile, what I want—”

  “Is your supper.”

  “No, matter of fact, I don’t think I could eat. Just something to untie this ferocious knot in my neck. A cuppla fingers of Scotch.”

  “Of course. Shall I bring it to your room?”

  “Oh, thanks. But make it the living room. I think I have need of a bit of Mozart before bed.” Kathryn turned toward the living room, but as she did so, the telephone rang. Mrs. Warburton, in the act of scooping Kathryn’s paraphernalia out of the cut-glass bowl, saw the look on Kathryn’s face.

  “Shall I tell whoever it is that you’re not here?” she asked. “Or asleep already?”

  “Asleep already. I’ll call ’em back tomorrow. Thanks.”

  Mrs. Warburton vanished in the direction of the kitchen, and Kathryn went to the living room to rummage through her CD’s. Almost immediately, however, Mrs. Warburton reappeared.

  “It’s Tracy Newman. I think you’d better talk to her.”

  Kathryn looked at her housekeeper in surprise, then walked over to the telephone. She sank with a sigh into an overstuffed chair, and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello, Tracy?”

  “Oh, Kathryn! Oh, thank God you’re home—I don’t know what—oh, dear.”

  Kathryn forgot instantly that she was tired. “Tracy, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong?”

  “Oh, it’s—I’m rather shaken. I’m at the police station. I just found a dead body in the St. Margaret’s driveway, and they want—”

  “You what?”

  “I just found a dead body in the driveway of the church, yes, I’m
serious. They want to talk to me—the police, I mean—and I’ve called Jamie to tell him I’ll be home later, but I—well I’m afraid—he’ll—he’ll get sort of antsy—and I know I shouldn’t ask, but I was just wondering if you could possibly—”

  “Of course I could. Glad to. I’ll go right over. But Tracy, what sort of a dead body? A heart-attack dead body? A run-over-by-a-car dead body?”

  “A knife-in-the-back dead body.”

  “Tracy! My God! It wasn’t somebody from the parish, was it?”

  “No. No, they made me look at his face, and it wasn’t anybody from St. Margaret’s.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” Then, as though hearing what she’d just said, Kathryn made a noise that sounded like “Ungh.” “That was selfish, wasn’t it? I suppose I ought to say a prayer for his soul, whoever he is, and obviously we’ll all be doing that on Sunday. But still, if I’m perfectly honest I have to admit that I’m glad he’s not one of ours. Selfish, as I said. But anyway, ye gods, girl! You’re walking home and you discover a dead body. That sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen to real people.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself, only it doesn’t go away. And it’s worse because I’m thinking what kind of a mood Jamie is going to be in, sitting around waiting for me to come home.”

  “Relax. I shall hasten over to your place and pour bourbon down his throat.”

  “I think we’re out of bourbon.”

  “I’ll take my own bottle.”

  “I can see your halo from here.”

  “Dazzling, isn’t it? I’ll be off right away. You take care of the police, I’ll take care of Jamie, and we’ll see you at home soon, I hope.”

  “Sure. Thanks, Kathryn.”

  Kathryn hung up the phone and sat still a moment. Then she emitted a sound that started as a howl of anguish and wound up as a fit of giggles. Mrs. Warburton, who had tactfully retired to fetch the Scotch, returned at this moment. Observing Kathryn’s state, she asked hesitantly, “Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, Mrs. Warburton, everything’s just lovely, I can’t believe what a charming day it’s been I simply don’t know if I can endure any more delightful things happening in my day; Tracy has crowned it all by tripping over a corpse in the St. Margaret’s driveway and I’m off to soothe the savage husband”—she plucked the drink from Mrs. Warburton’s hand and headed for the hall and up the stairs—“which, as we all know, is a thing that cannot be done in clericals, as Savage Husband gets but savager at sight of Mere Female Dressed Like Priest, ergo we must assume some frillier and less threatening vesture, and while I go up and change would you, please, dig up the fullest bottle of the best bourbon we’ve got, and stand by the front door with it so I can grab it as I go out?”

  Mrs. Warburton blinked, opened her mouth, shut it, blinked again, and said, “Of course, dear.”

  Kathryn left a few minutes later, dressed in slacks and sweater of a deceptively feminine pink, and carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels. She never drove to the Newmans’, as it was only a five-minute walk. But this time when she got to the curb, she actually paused by the car for about ten seconds. She was incredibly tired. But as she reached for her keys she suddenly realized she was also angry, and she decided not to drive. Better to walk it off.

  The first two minutes of the walk she spent glaring at the sidewalk and thinking that if Jamie weren’t such a bastard, his wife wouldn’t have needed to ask a friend to go pacify him while she was delayed by the police, which meant that if Jamie weren’t such a bastard Kathryn would be listening to Mozart and getting ready for bed right now. The third minute of the walk she spent pointing out to herself that most of her anger was not righteous wrath at a husband who picked on his wife, but her own irritation at being dragged out of the house when she was bone-tired. The fourth minute she spent reminding herself that it was Tracy who had dragged her out of the house, and it was less than honest to be mad at Jamie just because Tracy lacked the guts to stand up to him and tell him to get off her back. The fifth minute Kathryn spent deciding that it was high time she stopped putting all the blame on the husband just because she was partial to the wife, and also high time she engaged in some serious prayer on the subject of her animosity toward Jamie Newman. By the time she rang their doorbell (one of six desecrating the doorjamb of a nineteenth-century house on Merton Street) she was informing herself that she was overly judgmental, emotionally dishonest, and long overdue to see her spiritual director. As Jamie descended the stairs she scrapped the whole discussion, shoved it to the back of her mind, and braced herself to be civil.

  Jamie opened the door, and lit up with real pleasure. “Hey, I’m glad you’re here; big news! I tried to get Cunningham, but he hasn’t left the library yet. You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t, but I don’t have to guess. Tracy called me from the police station, which is why I’m here; you know me and my vulgar curiosity. By the way, I hear the bourbon supply in this house is negligible?” She held up the bottle.

  “Negligible? It’s nonexistent! And you are a doll.” He took the bottle, put an arm around Kathryn and kissed her neck with an exaggerated smack. She repressed a shudder. He swept her up to an apartment on the second floor. “We do have some Scotch, you’ll be relieved to hear, though it’s nowhere near up to your standards.”

  “Jamie, you’d be surprised by my standards; bring it on.”

  “Neat, and water on the side?”

  “How well you know me.”

  As Jamie busied himself in a minuscule kitchen, Kathryn looked around in the cramped living room for a place to sit down, but books and papers seemed to cover every surface. Jamie came back, observed her dilemma, laughed heartily, and said, “I’m hopeless! Once I get going, the papers go everywhere!” He surveyed the scholarly clutter for a minute, then said, “Here, you hold these”—he handed her the two glasses—“and I will tell Garcia Lorca he must yield to a lady.”

  With these words he scooped a stack of books out of a dilapidated armchair and began to look for another place to put them, making jokes about his untidiness, and talking to the authors of the books about minding their manners. Kathryn watched him playing the amusing host, returned his smiles with a few smiles equally expansive but less sincere, and wondered for the fiftieth time why on earth Jamie Newman couldn’t expend some of this overly-deliberate charm on his wife.

  When finally both of them had seats and drinks, Jamie inquired brightly, “Well, what do you think of the body in the driveway? You’re our murder expert, after all.”

  Since the last homicide case in which Kathryn had been involved had been the murder of someone she dearly loved, this remark was horrifically tactless, and Kathryn decided to simply wait in silence until Jamie figured this out. It took him about four seconds.

  “Oh, Kathryn, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have reminded you—”

  She waved a forgiving hand. “It’s all right.”

  “What I meant was,” Jamie continued, trying to cover his embarrassment, “do you think the guy was mugged, or what? I mean, that driveway is pitch black and deserted—I’ve told Tracy, if I’ve told her once I’ve told her a thousand times, I do not want her walking around this town after dark—now look what happens—if she’d been a few minutes earlier it might have been her.”

  “Jamie, I really don’t think so. This town is actually quite safe after dark, at least in the university area, under normal circumstances. Consider it, how stunned were you to hear about a corpse in the St. Margaret’s driveway? This is not a normal event for this neighborhood.”

  “Well, whether this was a mugging or not, it could happen in a place like that, and I don’t want Tracy walking around at night this way. She doesn’t have to go there at night. She could talk to Father Edwards anytime during the day. Why Thursday nights?”

  Kathryn knew as well as Jamie that Father Edwards had set the Thursday night appointment time as being most convenient for him
self, and that Tracy had politely accepted it. Kathryn also knew, better than Jamie, that his irritation was really not over the time of the appointments, but over his embarrassment at having his friends know that his wife went for marriage counseling. He himself had refused to go.

  Jamie stalked over to the window and peered out. “No sign of her yet. God, she’s taking her time.”

  “I daresay it’s the police who are taking her time.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? She promised me she’d mend the lining in the sleeve of my corduroy jacket so I could wear it tomorrow, and now she’ll probably say she’s too tired.”

  “That’s no problem. Give it to me.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask you—”

  “You didn’t ask me. I volunteered. What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll botch it up?”

  Jamie grinned. “I don’t know. Can you sew? I mean, doesn’t that fancy housekeeper of yours do all those menial chores for you?” He went into the bedroom to get the jacket, leaving Kathryn to remind herself not to get angry.

  She mended the jacket while he continued to fume about his wife. When she reached the limit of her patience, she abruptly changed the subject.

  “You know, Jamie, I don’t think this body is the victim of a mugging.”

  Jamie was an academic, and as such always up for a good argument. “What makes you think so?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Kathryn mused, “assuming a mugger was stupid or inefficient enough to kill rather than merely disable his victim, why leave the knife behind? Why not take it along to use for his next job? And another thing: There are a dozen places within ten minutes’ walk of here that are just as dark and deserted as the St. Margaret’s driveway—consider Prosper Gardens for instance—that are not directly across the street from the police station. If you were going to set up as a mugger around here, surely you wouldn’t do it under the noses of the police?”

  “You’re saying it’s an actual murder?”

  Kathryn set another careful stitch in the sleeve of the jacket. “I don’t know. I’m just saying that as a mugging, it seems to have a couple of holes in it.”