“I will.”
“How about Matt MacGregor?”
“I’m saving him.” Bakinowski speared the last bit of pancake and plowed roads through the syrup left on the plate. “I expect your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“You tell him he’s my suspect, tell him I’ve got more on him than I’m saying, stuff you don’t know. Hint it might be a witness. Who knows, you play it right, he might confide in you. Either way, he’ll be off balance when I question him.”
“He’s not your man,” Morgan said and pushed aside his half-eaten muffin.
“If I’m reading it right, and I think I am, this was a crime of passion. Think of MacGregor not as a cop but as a man spurned by a woman.”
“I don’t buy it,” Morgan said with the smallest twinge of uncertainty. Damn it, MacGregor should’ve told him! “I know the man.”
Bakinowski’s smile was tolerant. “Who knows anybody’s real nature? You and I, Chief, most of what we are is subliminal. That means we know damn little about ourselves, so how in hell can we presume to know somebody else?” The waitress had left the check. He picked it up. “My treat.”
• • •
Lydia Lapham grew roots in her sedated sleep, which wanted to keep her there. She woke hard. Her feelings were unassimilated, unmoored, trembly, and for moments she had no idea where she was. Then she heard the telephone ring. Presently her aunt answered it.
Showered, dressed, she looked in the mirror and felt alien, a stranger to herself. She did not belong to her hair, to the look on her face, to the clothes she had put on. She tried to force her mind to play a game. Yesterday had never happened. In the afternoon she would leave for work, where immobile patients awaited her, where elderly men sought her smile because it put life into their own. It was the little things that mattered.
Downstairs, in the sunny kitchen, her aunt greeted her with a smile. “You slept a long time, dear. I’m glad.” Not long enough, Lydia thought, not by a long chalk. “Let me make you breakfast,” her aunt said, and she shook her head. Coffee was enough. Her aunt poured. “Someone named Frank from the hospital called. Wanted to know if there was anything he could do.”
“That was nice of him,” she said without interest.
“He’s not here now, but Matt MacGregor spent the night outside in his car.”
“He shouldn’t have done that.”
“He loves you, dear.”
At the table she tasted her coffee, and through the screen of the window she heard the plaintive syllables of mourning doves. Flowers from a well-tended bed diffused a sun-warm scent almost unbearably sweet. “How long have you been up, Auntie?”
“Hours.”
“You’re doing better than I am, aren’t you?”
The older woman had been busying herself at the sink. Clumsily she turned around. A spoon fell to the floor. “Not really, dear. I’ve lost my only sister. Now I have nobody except you.”
Lydia looked beyond the crinkled lace of her aunt’s face and saw the suffering. The next instant she was on her feet, her arms thrown out. Sobs long held in were let loose.
A half hour later, emotions under control, Miss Westerly donned gloves and went out to weed and water her garden. Lydia stepped into the living room, where she slouched down in a cushioned chair, her legs extended. The tears had drained her, had washed away the reserve of strength with which she had been functioning. Had her aunt not returned within a few minutes from her gardening she might have slept again.
“A policeman is here, dear. He’d like to talk to you.”
“What policeman?”
“That lieutenant from the state police.”
An image circulated in her mind, but she was not sure it was the right one.
“If you don’t feel up to it, dear, I’ll tell him to come back later.”
“Tell him to come in,” she said.
Waiting, drawing her legs in, she could not control her face, an unmistakable step to more tears. Several minutes later, drying her eyes, she heard the easy voice of a man.
“It’s the fear of nothingness, Miss Lapham. It breeds in the night. It creeps over you at the funeral of a friend. It hits the young when a parent goes. I know, I lost my mother seventeen years ago.”
His voice startled her because she had not heard him enter the room and had no idea how long he had been sitting in the chair opposite her. His uncanny blue eyes reached out but seemed to take in nothing. Suddenly she had things to ask him, but wanted to keep them simple. She wanted to know only what was so and what was not.
“I have questions for you,” she said.
“And I for you, Miss Lapham.”
• • •
Chief Morgan cut across the grass in front of the town hall. A quick side step avoided bees drawn to a large shrub that had erupted into bloom overnight and was disgorging creamy blossoms. He strode along the side of the building and entered the police station with much on his mind. His nod to Meg O’Brien was perfunctory. Baring her teeth, she spoke in a low voice. “Matt’s in your office.”
“Have you said anything to him?”
She nodded miserably. “I shouldn’t have.”
MacGregor, sitting on a metal folding chair near the chief’s desk, sprang up when Morgan entered. His head was poised rigidly, as if from a crick in his neck, the price paid for spending the night in his car. Red spots moistened a patch of his left shirtsleeve. He had scratched the arm too vigorously and drawn blood. “What’s going on, Chief? Am I going crazy?”
Morgan closed the door and took a seat behind his desk. “You talking about Bakinowski?”
“Yes!”
“Don’t get upset. Sit down.”
MacGregor shook from a cataclysm of feelings, anger and fear among them. He stayed on his feet. “I’m a suspect, that’s what it looks like.”
“Bakinowski’s shooting in the dark,” Morgan said. “All he’s got is a theory.”
“What theory?”
Morgan, quickly, gave him Bakinowski’s reasoning and, in a slower voice, added, “He sees you as a spurned lover.”
“That’s horseshit,” MacGregor said, reddening. “We haven’t broken up, we’re just not getting married … yet.”
“Bakinowski says it’s more definite than that.”
“What does he know?”
“I shouldn’t have heard it from him. Why didn’t you tell me, Matt?”
“Tell you what? That my girl said she didn’t wanna marry me?” The words were spoken in a gush of ragged breath. “I got my pride, for Christ’s sake.”
“This isn’t the time for pride,” Morgan said sternly. “What about this doctor Bakinowski mentioned? Was Lydia dating him?”
“That’s garbage. The guy’s somebody she knew a long time ago. Maybe there was something way back then, not now.” Tippy on his feet, MacGregor sat down hard on the metal chair. His cheeks burned. “You think I’m not busted up over this? I loved the Laphams, the both of ‘em!”
“Take it easy,” Morgan said in a calming voice. “Let’s try to clear this up fast. Where were you when it happened?”
“I was trying to call Lydia, I told you. I was on the phone.”
“But where were you calling from?”
“I was home.”
“Alone?”
“You know my mother spends every summer at my sister’s place on the Cape. Yeah, I was alone.”
“You parked the cruiser in the drive. Somebody must’ve seen it.”
“I don’t know, maybe, probably not. Christ, Chief, I can’t believe this conversation.”
Morgan’s gray eyes focused on him. “If there was anything I should know, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“I can’t believe you had to ask me that.” MacGregor’s flush had gained control of his pug nose and gave him the look of a high school athlete demeaned by the coach. “I’ve been a cop eight years, you got me the appointment, remember? You name me one time I’ve let you down.”
“You never have,” Morgan said, remembering the appointment. The selectmen had favored another candidate, and he had pushed for MacGregor, who had an associate degree from a community college, a menial job in Lawrence, and a sickly mother he and his sister were supporting. He also had drive and spunk.
Morgan rose from the desk, MacGregor from the metal chair. “I’m sorry I had to put you through this,” Morgan said, stepping around the desk. He patted MacGregor’s shoulder. “But I had to get those questions out of the way.”
“So what do I do now?”
“Nothing different. Go about your job.”
“What about Bakinowski?”
“I’ll handle him.”
MacGregor tensed. “Before I was mad. Now I’m worried.”
Morgan gave him a final pat. “Trust me.”
• • •
Alone in the small fitting room at Roberta’s Ladies Shoppe, Christine Poole treated her fingers to the silky feel of a black evening shift, one that Roberta had not recommended. It was sequined, trimmed in satin, and looked recklessly wearable, but she frowned when she tried it on. The frown grew as she turned this way and that in the triple mirror. A voice, startling her, said, “I could tell you some exercises to get rid of that belly.”
The voice was engagingly raspy and unmistakable. Christine pivoted and said, “I’m comfortable the way I am.”
“That’s what matters,” Arlene Bowman said. The dress she was holding was a mere slip, ink black, elegantly simple. She raised it against herself. “What do you think?”
“On you it will look wonderful.”
Arlene Bowman, trim and compact in her tennis costume, was younger by five years, but it could have been ten. Her glossy blue-black hair, cut short, crowned a remarkable beauty of the sort that made men immediately search for impurities to render her human, endearing, approachable. Christine tended to accept her at face value. They knew each other, casually, from socials at the country club. Their husbands, involved in business deals, knew each other better.
“Christ, I should’ve checked this before,” Arlene Bowman said, glaring at the price tag on the dress.
“Nothing’s cheap here, even on sale,” Christine pointed out.
“Trust Roberta to charge New York prices. Do you have money of your own, Christine, or must you rely on your husband?”
The question was a blunt trespass into bad taste but in no way detracted from the woman. Christine smiled. “As a matter of fact, I do have money of my own.”
“My problem is I don’t.”
“My first husband left me well situated,” Christine said before she could stop herself.
“Ah, what the hell,” Arlene Bowman said with a sudden dismissive glance at the price tag. “I might even try that one on too, unless you plan to buy it.”
A dressing stall was available, but Arlene Bowman’s body was meant to be looked at, and there and then the younger woman shed her tennis togs. Her bra was slim and her briefs wispy. After a moment of hesitation, Christine hiked the shift that flaunted her complacencies and revealed underpants that stretched over her navel.
The raspy voice said, “We have a mutual friend.”
“Do we? Who is that?”
“The police chief,” Arlene Bowman said and slipped the inky garment over her head. Her face came out of it smiling and vivid. “James Morgan,” she said.
“I wouldn’t call him a friend,” Christine said, fighting for composure. “He investigated an attempted burglary at the house a few months ago and now makes random checks.”
“I met him under somewhat similar circumstances. Handsome devil, isn’t he? Those gray eyes.” Arlene Bowman ran smoothing hands over the black dress, which flowed over her like a liquid seeking vacuums. “He must be busy now with that shooting. Fancies himself a detective.”
Christine hurried into her old blouse and skirt, unfashionable and comfortable; then she gave repairing touches to her hair while avoiding the triple mirror, in which Arlene Bowman was viewing herself, the black silk clinging to every move.
“What do you think?”
“Eye-catching.”
“That means Gerald won’t like it, but I do.”
At that moment Roberta, who had been busy with another customer, swept into the fitting room. She was ungodly tall, with oyster white hair and a whip of a figure. Her breasts, almost visible through a sheer top, were flat, pale disks. Her voice barked. “How are my two favorite customers doing?”
“I think I may take this little thing,” Arlene Bowman said, “despite the outlandish price.”
“A bargain, Mrs. Bowman, believe me.” Roberta’s eagle eye attacked from all angles. “No alterations needed. Amazing.”
Arlene Bowman looked over her shoulder as Christine prepared to leave. “We must get together soon and talk about our friend.”
Christine stiffened. “Why would we want to do that?”
“I think it would be fun.”
• • •
The pathologist from the hospital in Lawrence phoned in the autopsy report. No surprises. Flo Lapham, remarkably healthy for a woman her age, had died from a single gunshot wound that had shattered an artery. Earl Lapham had a diseased heart. The coronary, as suspected, had been massive. “Devastating” was the word the doctor used. Chief Morgan thanked him and clicked off. Moments later he left the station.
He drove slowly away from the green and down one of the older streets, shady and melancholy, bound by the past. Children had played there, grown up, and departed, leaving behind aging parents who talked of selling but probably never would. A woman in curlers, May Hutchins, hurried to the mailbox and returned the chief’s passing wave with some embarrassment. The largest house was at the end of the street, Drinkwater’s Funeral Home, distinguished by a veranda with trellised rose vines. This was where the remains of Flo and Earl Lapham would be delivered, rear entrance.
He turned left and a few minutes later pulled up in front of Miss Westerly’s little gingerbread house, where the porch light still burned. He was winding his way toward the back door when a voice startled him. “We’re here.”
Lydia Lapham spoke from a wooden lawn chair next to one occupied by her aunt. Lydia leaned forward and scratched both shins, leaving chalk marks. Morgan said, “I presume you’ve had a visitor.”
“Yes. He asked questions that were irrelevant, pointless.”
“But you know what he was getting at.”
She was slow to answer, and the flat moment of silence spread. Her eyes cast an unnatural light. Finally she said, “It was not Matt.”
“Who do you think it could’ve been?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice had a skeletal quality. Rising from the chair, she looked coldly pure and inviolate. For a confounding moment Morgan suspected that were she to walk away, she would leave no footprints, no traces whatsoever. “But it couldn’t have been Matt,” she said. “He loves me.”
“And do you love him?” Morgan asked and felt himself flinch. It was not a question he had intended to ask. He watched her take a breath, which drew her face closer to the bone.
“I have strong feelings for Matt, but they don’t include marriage.”
“And you told Matt that?”
“Matt hears what he wants to hear. In many ways he’s a boy.”
Miss Westerly, who had not stirred, seemed to have grown smaller in the chair. She gazed up as a polite child would. “Maybe I should let you two talk in private.”
“It’s all right, Auntie.” Lydia’s eyes, which were enormous, shifted back to Morgan. “Are you busy, Chief? Could we go for a little drive? I need to get away for a bit.” Her eyes flew to her aunt. “Do you mind?”
“I think it would do you good, dear.”
In the car, Lydia cranked the window down on her side and asked Morgan whether he would mind driving out of town. She did not want people looking at her. She wanted the anonymity of a highway. He drove toward Route 495 while she sat erect with her eyes on the white
stripe, as if it were the single thing holding the road together. On Route 495 she dropped her head back, and he drove in silence faster than usual, well beyond the speed limit. They skirted little cities known for what they had lost: Lawrence its mills, Haverhill its shoe shops, Amesbury its hat factory. When the highway, nearing its limit, began swerving toward Interstate 93, he slowed dramatically and took the first exit ramp. From there he sought a back road for the return drive. He thought she was asleep, but her eyes fluttered open.
“You seem to have a nice life, James.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, his eye out his window. “It’s not the greatest thing, a man my age still running around.”
“Your wife died young. Car accident, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it. About you.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
They were on a narrow road now that followed the meandering of the Merrimack River, along which the sun had fastened itself. “When my wife died,” he said, “I almost left town for good. I wanted to go to another part of the world where it was already tomorrow.”
“But you stayed.”
“I stayed.”
“Why?”
He swerved slightly to avoid cyclists on the road. “I don’t know,” he said with a vision of Elizabeth as a bride, a civil ceremony, a romantic elopement. She was not from the town. A college buddy had fixed them up. She was a blind date who became the love of his life and took to Bensington as if she had been born there. “I’ll never know,” he said.
A breeze carried the fresh smell of lumber with the essence of the tree still in it. People with money were having a large, rambling house built on a rise above the river. Lydia said, “I remember your wife was beautiful.”
“Yes, I would agree with you.”
“How long did it take for the pain to pass?”
“It never does, but you learn to live with it.”
“I’ve heard that said.” Irony corrupted the tone of her voice and the posture of her body. Then she tossed her hair back. “I had a little crush on you when I was a teenager. A lot of us girls did.”
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