Mummers' Curse

by Gillian Roberts

  “Stop thinkin’ about what you’re thinkin’ about, which is what I’m supposed to think about an’ concentrate instead on thinkin’ about what you’re supposed to be thinkin’ about.”

  “If I could follow you, I’d try. But all I meant was that I know some of the people involved, so could I help you?”

  “Sure. I’d like you to tell me whatever you know, just the way you did about Jimmy Pat. But if you mean could we job-share, then the answer is no. Adamantly. Definitely. Absolutely.”

  “Get off the fence, Mackenzie. You want me as a partner or not?”

  He had the grace to grin.

  “So, then,” I said. “Don’t you think I could—”

  “I think you, or somebody, could make dinner.”

  “Dinner?”

  “You remember. Food. The stuff that gets rid of that yawningly empty sensation. This somebody doesn’t have the energy to cook tonight, and don’ know who’s open for takeout on New Year’s Day.”

  Given that the cat was unlikely to whip up a repast, that left me as the somebody. I am a moody cook. I have my moments, but only when I feel like it. Mostly, I don’t.

  The grinding dailiness of food preparation makes me feel trapped in an alimentary canal. I can hear the hollow boom of empty stomachs, the gurgle-song of digestive juices. Buy ingredients, they warble; prepare them, serve them to me in a new form, clean up from the serving and the cooking, and then—well, I don’t want to think about the finale of the roundelay. And if you listen to it, obey it, do it—then you have to start all over again. Couldn’t we take care of all that and save a whole lot of time if we were fitted with long-term batteries instead? I think Mother Nature was on the phone when the idea of sustenance came by for review, and she waved it on.

  Besides, even though we now shared the loft, the kitchen was still, unmistakably, Mackenzie’s. He tried to be nonchalant about it, but I could feel him watching that I didn’t scratch the tin lining of his beloved copper pots, and that I left the counters sterilized in case we’d have to perform brain surgery later in the evening. I like to slop things around, feel industrious through an abundance of clutter, then do a decent cleanup. Life is too short to polish a copper pot, which, just like the rest of the food cycle, needs constant redoing.

  Luckily, we still had the chicken-vegetable-noodle soup, most of a good crusty loaf of bread, and a bottle of Pinot Noir. On my less inspired days, whatever I cooked seemed like leftovers—even when we’d never had the food a first time.

  “You have to remember,” Mackenzie said from the sofa, “that somewhere is a person who shot a man in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators. A person, therefore, who isn’t easily intimidated. Cold-blooded. Not a person to frighten by pushing on him or meddlin’.”

  “Meddling! You make me sound like a—”

  “Meddler.”

  “I wanted to help. That was all.”

  “Does it have anythin’ to do with your friend’s being involved?”

  “Why are you picking on him? You said everybody was a suspect. You don’t know anything except that Vincent was hard to find today. Which argues in his favor, anyway.”

  Mackenzie nodded. “He’s a suspect, then, is that okay?”

  “Why? You sought him out because he teaches at my school and you knew his name. Teaching with me isn’t a crime, but you’re making it one. That’s why I feel involved.”

  “Far as I can see, you always feel involved. Have you ever considered puttin’ this quirk to use?”

  “You called it meddling.”

  “Not that way. You could turn a profit by labeling it a problem, a societal ill. You know the drill. Females who love crime too much. Homicide addiction. Women who snoop too much. Write a book, go on talk shows. Confessions of a crime junkie.”

  He pronounced it as crahm, but a slur, slurred, doesn’t sound less offensive.

  “A twelve-step program,” he went on with low-grade Southern glee, “startin’ with step one: one crime at a time. You’ll make a fortune.”

  “Never mind. It was an offer, nothing more. End of topic.” I said it mildly, actually meant it, although I was still worried about Vincent Devaney’s whereabouts and/or why Mackenzie was suspicious of him. But in the meantime, peace was restored in our little household. After awhile, we even remembered that there were things to do together that were more fun than discussing crime and punishment.

  Later, Mackenzie napped. He had to go back to work at midnight. I lay on the bed, watching the digital adjustments of our Doomsday clock. We’d gone to a Boxing Day party after Christmas. Each invitee brought his worst gift for a blind swap.

  I wound up stuck with the Doomsday clock, and nobody else tried to trade for it. No wonder. And no wonder somebody had gladly given it up.

  It sat on the dresser, either a grisly piece of humor or just plain grisly. On a black marble slab, a lighted panel said:

  YOU HAVE

  359,160 HOURS

  15 MINUTES

  27 SECONDS

  LEFT IN YOUR LIFE. ENJOY THEM.

  THE TIME IS NOW: 10:47 P.M.

  Enjoy them, indeed. Who had thought the device up? What kind of person bought it as a Christmas gift—and for whom, with what motive? As I watched, my remaining time dwindled, second by second. Three hundred and fifty-nine thousand hours didn’t seem enough, particularly when I could watch them diminish. I worried whether the clock maker had accounted for the leap years in my future, for daylight saving time, for medical breakthroughs and random violence. Did this mean it didn’t matter if I exercised or started smoking again or rode a motorcycle without a helmet or jaywalked?

  When the telephone rang, I realized that I had dozed off. The Doomsday clock said 1:05 a.m. Also that I had two hours and eighteen minutes less to live.

  The caller brusquely asked if Mackenzie was there and told me that if so, I should immediately wake him.

  We’d overslept. The alarm on the real clock, hastily and wrongly set for a.m. instead of p.m., had remained silent. Actually, only one of us had overslept since I’d never intended either to go to sleep at eleven or to be up at midnight.

  Mackenzie looked so exhausted, I felt cruel for waking him. It didn’t seem fair that baddies got to do their thing whenever they so pleased, and goodies had to play the game according to the criminal’s timetable.

  I saw him off, then shuffled back to bed, intending to sleep straight through the last day of my vacation, even if it meant missing hours, minutes, and seconds of remaining life.

  It had taken me awhile to get used to the wide-open expanses of the loft after years in my historic but constricted house. When I first moved in here, I felt stranded in a wilderness. Nothing above the high ceilings but roofing, nothing below but other spaces, too often silent, and an art gallery that was closed at night. For a month, I half hoped the walls would close in, like something out of Poe, but now, I was accustomed to a skylit ceiling and plaster and brick horizons I could barely see at night. The dangerous expanse had become breathing space.

  Macavity, who was supposed to be the skittish one, had taken ten minutes max to call the place home.

  All of which was to say that both the cat and I were soundly asleep when the door to the loft opened.

  I wouldn’t have noticed, it was done so quietly, except that Macavity did notice and pounded over my hip and chest en route to his under-bed hiding spot. It’s amazing how much a cat makes itself weigh when it’s stomping you. “Detour, you inconsiderate beast,” I groaned. The cat spoke back.

  “Since you’re already up…”

  I screamed. And lost a huge number of seconds and minutes of the potential joy I had left.

  “Din’ mean to startle you, thought I heard you—”

  “For God’s sake! How could you not think you’d scare me? What are you doing here? You just left! Why didn’t you knock, or make noise—what are you doing here?”

  “Workin’. And now that you really are up…”

  I was. De
finitely. All systems jump-started even though, squint as I might, I couldn’t see a hint of daylight through the windows, or even through the skylight. “It isn’t tomorrow yet.”

  “It’s four forty-six a.m.,” he said in a bright voice that assumed I was lucky he hadn’t let me sleep past this fabulous hour. “I’ll make coffee,” he added, and he relocated to do so.

  There followed an inordinate amount of grinding, tamping, clattering, and cabinet-slamming for so minor a task.

  I dragged my bod out of bed, into the arctic of a brick-walled expanse whose heat had been turned down for the night. I insulated my feet with a pair of Mackenzie’s ski socks and pulled a hooded sweatshirt on top of the oversized T-shirt I wore as a nightie. I did not look like an ad for eternal womanhood, but I was warmer. “What is it?” I muttered. I caught the first fragrant fumes of brewing coffee. “What’s going on?”

  “I missed you, so I made a detour. Nice that we live so close to headquarters.”

  “I’m always glad to see youuuuu….” The you turned into a gigantic yawn. When it was finished, I continued. “Only, sometimes more than other times. I thought you were working.”

  “I am.” Enough had dripped into the pot to pour us each a cup. I felt more nervous with each nuance of coffee-serving minutiae, as if Mackenzie were inventing a ceremony for an onerous event. Something was amiss if the man visited this way at this hour while on a new homicide case.

  He rummaged around until he found leftover bagels, then he sliced two and put them in the toaster oven.

  “You’re gonna get a call,” he said, “later, from the department. Billy Obenhauser, okay? Wants to talk about your buddy. Devaney.”

  “Why?” I knew that business that Mackenzie had said earlier, but I didn’t know why. “As a character witness?”

  “As an alibi.” He sat down across from me and sipped his coffee, never taking his eyes off my face. I hoped the attentiveness was love, not surveillance.

  “Whose?” I asked. “For what?” Those weren’t over-bright questions, but I was sleep deprived and even if I hadn’t been, the idea still wouldn’t have made ready sense.

  “Vincent Devaney’s. He insists—not to me, to Billy, who was questioning him—that he was not around for the probable time Jimmy Pat was shot. Says he was with a teacher from his school. Namely, you.”

  “But I was with you!”

  “I know that and you know that. Devaney seems the only one who doesn’t know that. Of course, there are gaps like when you and Karen left. I can’t vouch for then.” He waited.

  So that hadn’t been love light in his eyes but the gleam of professional observation. “What are you intimating? We stood in line for the Porta Potti, and then we stopped at a pretzel vendor’s.”

  “And the other time was when I went to get us hot dogs.”

  “What are you saying, C.K.?”

  “Just the facts, ma’am. The thing is, Vincent doesn’t appear to have known that we were parade-viewing together. Or that I’m a cop. You never told him about me?” He seemed to feel slighted.

  “About you? Told him what? I notified him of your existence. Of our relationship. And probably about what you do for a living.” We’d talked lots in the months during which I was supposedly writing my article.

  The article. I felt an avaricious and shameful flash. Would it be more salable because of the murder?

  I had to think about precisely what I had told Vincent. Before school ended for winter break, I’d mentioned that I was taking my niece to the parade. I had no idea whether I’d said Mackenzie would be there, too. Probably not, because I couldn’t have known for sure two weeks ago. The man’s schedule is not exactly predictable. So it could have appeared I’d be at the parade with Karen and no one else. The implications of this made me sad. “He’s not a killer,” I said.

  “Nobody is. Everybody is, pushed enough.”

  “They were like brothers.”

  “So were Cain and Abel.”

  “Come on. Best friends, then.”

  “Fighting over everything,” he said, surprising me. “Pretty heatedly about who would be the next club Captain.”

  I waved that away. “Good-natured rivalry, that’s all.”

  “Even about who would wear the frame suit. And Jimmy Pat had a habit of always winning their contests. This could have been one contest too many.”

  “You’re pushing too hard. Not Vincent.”

  Mackenzie raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s all I know and now I’ve said it. So why does somebody else have to question me?”

  “Ethical gray area if I question you about your whereabouts. I was part of them, remember?”

  “Then why this visit? Surely, warning me about being questioned is even grayer.”

  “I’d never warn you about police procedure. That’d be wrong. I’m here because I can’t bear bein’ away from you too long.”

  “Am I supposed to know that this Billy person is going to happen?” I asked. “Or that Vincent named me as his alibi?”

  “Kind of slipped out, didn’t it. Post-pillow talk. Maybe it would be best not to mention it when Billy calls, which won’t be for a while.”

  “He’s actually waiting until daybreak?”

  “He has other things to take care of first. A lot of what he’d want to know from you about timin’ depends on forensic results.”

  So I was privy to something that wouldn’t be called upon for a while. Why let me know this? Wasn’t this the man who a few hours earlier had advocated recovery from meddling addiction?

  He must have seen the questions bopping through my brain, or at least had enough brains of his own to recognize that they needed to be addressed. He leaned over the little table to put his hand on mine. “You may think I’m about to eat a bagel, but it’s more like crow.”

  “No metaphors or similes until daybreak,” I said.

  “He trusts you, this Devaney. He didn’t call and alert you to his considerable lie, did he?”

  I shook my head. It felt heavy with woeful suspicion.

  “An’ it is a lie, isn’t it?”

  I exhaled with annoyance.

  “Had to ask, is all. See why I can’t interrogate you or take a statement?” Point well made.

  “Thing is, he trusts you to protect him. Which is to say, with a relationship like that, maybe you’d find things out that we aren’t going to, like why he’s lying and what’s really going down. At least, you might find out more quickly and easily than we could. Save time. He owes you that, doesn’t he? You could be helping him out of big trouble.”

  “Officer, are you saying what I think?”

  “Who ever knows what you’re thinkin’?”

  “Are you not he who forbade me even to speculate?”

  “Live and learn.”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “You won’t? But…but you always…”

  “Not unless you say it. Out loud.”

  “Aw, please…”

  “Clearly, comprehensibly.” I folded my arms across my chest.

  He swallowed, scowled, took a deep breath, and looked as if the required words might gag him. But Mackenzie is a brave and practical man.

  “Okay,” he said. “To speed things up, and since he has already involved you in this, and if you feel you could or should, would you talk to your friend Vincent?”

  I considered this a moment. “I’d like a declarative sentence, not a question.”

  He tapped his fingers on the table. “I could use—”

  “Say my name, would you?”

  “Mandy, I would appreciate your help on this.”

  “No problem.” The light through the window facing east was pearly. Almost dawn. I went over to his side of the table, sat down on his lap, kissed him, and whispered in his ear. Not sweet nothings. Reality. “You are a most excellent man and right about many things, but you are wrong about one thing. You’re not about to eat either bagels or crow. Your only option is charcoal.”r />
  I stood back up and extracted two cremated bagels from the toaster oven.

  Sometimes it takes entirely too long to get a man to admit he needs you.

  Four

  VINCENT WASN’T ANSWERING HIS PHONE. I’D WAITED A DECENT INTERVAL until households with early-rising toddlers would be up. Then I’d waited longer, until even households with hungover adults would be up. But all I got in return for my patience was a machine that promised to get back to me. It lied.

  “It’s me, Vincent. Me, Mandy.” I sounded like I was auditioning for a Tarzan movie. “It is I, Vincent,” I said next go-round. Maybe he only responded to the grammatically correct.

  Why did I have to tell him that we had to talk? I wasn’t even supposed to know that he was using—abusing—me as his alibi, but he certainly knew it. We were friends. Why hadn’t he called me?

  From outside and below, I heard the whir of snowplows and the occasional scrape of a shovel hitting sidewalk. The part of the sky I could see was soft gray. The sun had risen and presumably was up there somewhere, but in a reclusive mode. Probably waiting until later, when its overdue appearance would slush up the snow in time for it to freeze into a layer of ice by nightfall.

  Things are bad when you’re miffed with the sun.

  Two hours and four more messages later, with Billy Obenhauser’s interrogation looming, I’d had it with Alexander Graham Bell. I’d communicate the old-fashioned way, in person, braving the not-so-great outdoors.

  I couldn’t imagine Vincent committing a cold-blooded murder, or fleeing. I could, however, picture him biding his time at home, in shock at the implied accusation of having committed a crime.

  I didn’t want to drive on unplowed streets, so I waited for a holiday-schedule bus an inordinately long time. This sleuthing stuff, even this talking-with-my-friend stuff, was less than convenient. Vincent had better be worth it.

  He lived near Ninth Street, in the same neighborhood as his parents did and his grandparents had. His in-laws lived five blocks away and his wife’s brother and family, a few blocks over. In South Philly, a remarkably constant and intact world of its own, there was nothing exceptional about this ongoing proximity. While the rest of the country subscribed to the different-is-better theory, following jobs and whims to all corners of the earth, South Philly remained amazingly cohesive, generations choosing to live close to one another—young men ignoring Horace Greeley and never going west, not even as far as West Philly.