But Meredith was following her own train of thought. “Who’s Officer Connors?” she said, following Hansom into the hall that led to the bathroom.
“He’s the man we posted to watch the crime scene overnight.”
“Ooo, was he here all night?”
“Yes.”
“Can I come while you talk to him?”
“I don’t see why not. There’s nothing much to see.”
With a triumphant glance back at Claire, Meredith followed the detective down the hall. A moment later Claire heard the screen door open and close.
Camille sank down on the couch and laughed softly. “She’s something else, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, she is,” Claire replied, suddenly exhausted. Fatigue was beginning to replace the adrenaline in her body, and her eyelids felt as if they had weights attached to them. She sat next to Camille and rubbed her forehead, a gesture she always associated with her father, who, when he was tired, used to rub his head until his thin grey hair spiked out in all directions, like the crown on the Statue of Liberty.
“You look worn out,” said Camille. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Not much.”
“Well, I think we’re in good hands with Detective Hansom. Je le trouve très sympatique . . .” Camille added.
“Yes,” Claire agreed. “He is very nice.”
Camille laughed. “I always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say things in French when they’re a little . . . embarrassing. So you speak French?”
“Yes,” said Claire. “A little—not like you.”
“So you like our detective?”
The voice came from behind them, and Claire turned to see Jack Mulligan leaning against the double sliding doors that led to the dining room. They had been pulled partially closed by Detective Hansom the night before.
“Good morning, Jack,” Claire said, wondering how long he had been standing there.
“Good morning,” Mulligan replied, sauntering toward them. Claire sensed something threatening in his presence, but thought maybe she was just reacting to what she had heard about him.
“Well, I’ve always said there was no accounting for taste,” he continued, settling himself in one of the overstuffed armchairs on either side of the couch. “I used to try to figure out what women liked, but I’ve stopped trying. Some things just defy logic.”
“Oh, it’s really very simple,” Camille replied sweetly. “If you want to know what women go for, think of the opposite of what you are.”
For a split second his face remained expressionless, but then his mouth softened and he laughed. “Touché. Well parried. I didn’t mean to imply that women are the only ones who are illogical, of course. Men have their share of it—some men, anyway.”
“But not you?” said Claire.
“Oh, I have my moments . . . I have my moments.”
Jack looked around the room, and in spite of her dislike of the man, Claire noticed that he had a handsome profile—straight nose, high forehead, and a strong chin under the white beard. “Are we the only ones up?” he said, running a hand through his thick white hair. Once again Claire noticed the missing fingers, and was burning to ask how he lost them.
“No, you are not.” This time they all turned, and saw Two Joe standing on the porch, speaking to them through the screen door. He opened the door and entered the house. He wore his broad-brimmed black leather hat and was sweating heavily.
“Hello, Two Joe,” said Camille as he settled his bulky body into the other armchair.
“Good morning,” he answered, removing his hat and wiping the sweat off his broad forehead with a blue kerchief.
“You look like you’ve just been for a walk,” said Claire.
“I have,” he answered, offering no further information. Claire thought he looked preoccupied. Maybe she would talk to him later, alone, but not with Jack here.
Camille looked down the hall. “I wonder what’s keeping them so long?” she said, but just then they heard Meredith’s voice from down the hall.
“See, the fact that there’s no evidence of forced entry suggests three possibilities: 1) Maya knew her killer, and let him in; 2) she left the bathroom door unlocked for some reason; and 3) he was waiting for her in that little shower stall.” Meredith entered the living room and stood looking at the little group gathered around the fireplace. “Hello, everyone,” she said, smiling. She was in her element. Detective Hansom stood in the doorway behind her.
“Well, Inspector, how’s it going?” Jack Mulligan asked cheerfully. He’s not a bit upset at this tragedy, thought Claire. In fact, he’s enjoying it.
“Detective, not Inspector,” Hansom answered wearily. “Do you think I might have some more of that coffee?” he said to Camille.
“Of course!” she said brightly, jumping up from the couch.
“Could you bring me some cookies?” said Meredith.
“Meredith,” Claire suggested, “instead of asking people to wait on you, why don’t you go get some for everyone?”
“Oh, all right.” Meredith sighed, and followed Camille into the kitchen. Detective Hansom sat heavily on the red leather hassock just in front of the hearth. A little puff of ashes rose and settled again on the stones. The hearth was cold now, but Claire remembered how the fire had burned late into the night, the embers glowing like red eyes in the dark.
“So, Detective, how’s it going?” Jack repeated.
Hansom looked at him. “It’s early yet,” he said. “I can’t really—”
“Discuss it with the suspects?”
Hansom sighed. “I didn’t say that, sir.”
“But we are all potential suspects? You don’t really believe it was an outsider, do you?”
“Not this time.” Two Joe’s voice, low and soft, seemed to come from deep inside him. They all turned to look at him, but just then Camille and Meredith returned from the kitchen. Meredith carried a dinner plate full of cookies.
“Here,” she said, plopping it down on the coffee table, “help yourselves.”
After another cup of coffee Detective Hansom left, accompanied as far as his car by both Camille and Meredith.
“I hope the tape is a useful clue,” Meredith said as they stepped out onto the porch.
“So do I,” said the detective, his face grim. “This killer deserves to be caught, and I intend to catch him.”
Shortly after Detective Hansom left, another uniformed officer arrived to relieve Officer Connors, who had guarded the crime scene all night. By that time most of the residents were awake. They wandered around the house looking dazed, talking quietly to each other. A few people tried to work, but mostly they sat on the porch clutching cups of cold coffee, faces haggard and pale from lack of sleep. Liza had put Claire’s seminars on hold until further notice.
Meredith lurked around the crime scene all morning. No one was allowed near it, but she sniffed around the catwalk and the woods that surrounded the artists’ studios at the end of the catwalk.
Liza and Claire were sitting on the living-room couch talking when Evelyn Gardner came swooping in through the front door, her face set in a tragic mask.
“I came as soon as I heard!” she bellowed. “This is so upsetting; nothing like this has ever happened here!”
Claire noticed that she wasn’t too upset to wear makeup and jewelry. She wore an expensive black silk pantsuit; her lashes glistened with mascara, her wide mouth was outlined in red, and her hair was elaborately coiffed, not a strand out of place. Evelyn would have been perfectly at home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but in Woodstock she looked out of place. The only other woman at Ravenscroft Claire had seen wearing lipstick was Camille; even glamorous Maya had only dabbed her blond lashes with a little mascara.
“You poor thing,” Evelyn said, throwing herself down next to Liza. “It must have been terrible!”
“It was worse for Claire,” Liza replied. “She found the body.”
“You d
id? Oh, good Lord, that must have been absolutely traumatic!”
Claire didn’t want to play into Evelyn’s little drama, so she just shrugged. Claire knew her type: some people just thrived on a crisis, no matter what kind.
“I already called Maya’s family,” said Liza. “They’re shipping the body out to Minnesota.”
Evelyn shuddered. “Ugh. That’s where she’s from—Minnesota?”
“Yes. We’re going to have a little memorial service here for her tonight if you’d like to come.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” said Evelyn. Then she said in a low voice, “Do they—do they think she . . .?”
“She was murdered,” Liza replied.
Claire thought Liza emphasized the word murder to shock Evelyn, but Evelyn did not look shocked.
“Well, I’m just so sorry you had to come up here for this!” Evelyn said to Claire. There was a pause, then she got up, brushing the cat hairs from her clothes. Claire noticed with satisfaction that Ralph’s white hair really showed up on black silk. “Well,” Evelyn said, walking briskly toward the front door, “if there’s anything I can do, please call me! Meanwhile, I’ll inform the Guild at our weekly meeting.”
“I’ll come to the meeting if you like,” Liza offered, escorting her to the door.
“All right; you can tell them exactly what happened.”
“As best I can,” said Liza. “No one knows what really happened.”
Except the murderer, thought Claire.
“Well, il existe toujours la mort dans la vie,” said Evelyn in a deep, dramatic voice. “Death exists even in the middle of life.” She laid a hand on Liza’s shoulder, then turned and went down the steps to her car. Claire and Liza watched her drive off in her jazzy little red Chevy.
“Well,” said Liza, “at least that’s over.” She paused, squinting into the midday sun, which was winning its battle with the clouds, shining bravely through the trees, causing a thin mist to rise from the soggy earth. “Is it just me, or does Evelyn seem to regard life as one big performance!”
Claire shook her head. “It’s not you.”
Just then Meredith came striding around the corner of the house carrying something. “Look what I found by the crime scene!” she crowed triumphantly, holding up a crushed cigarette butt. Claire bent over to examine the stub, and immediately recognized the elegant gold filter of a Sobraine Black Russian.
Chapter 9
The next day Claire helped Liza in the garden all morning, weeding around the pink impatiens and coleus that grew in the shady areas around the outbuildings in back of Ravenscroft.
“It’s therapeutic, gardening—or at least that’s what I tell myself,” Liza said, wiping the sweat off her face, which was beginning to freckle in the late-morning sun.
“I think it is.” Claire carefully pulled a fat worm clinging to the roots of some weeds and deposited him on a clod of overturned dirt. He wriggled down into the dark soil gratefully, his shiny pink body twisting and writhing in the cool earth.
“It’s a way of negating death, planting something,” said Liza, panting from the heat as she pulled a clump of weeds from the ground. “And since I’m never going to have children, this is as close as I’ll get to procreation, I guess . . .”
Claire looked at Liza. Her big friendly face was covered with a thin layer of grime and sweat. “Do you feel bad about that?” she said, surprised at herself for asking something so intimate.
Liza straightened up and removed her leather gardening gloves. “It’s too damn hot for these. No, I don’t feel bad . . . though Sherry and I do talk about adoption.” She paused and cocked her head to one side. “What’s it like—do you mind if I ask? I mean, Meredith—I know she’s not—you know . . . but you seem very close, almost as though she was, you know what I mean?”
Claire laughed softly. “Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve thought about it a lot, about whether there was some way to—formalize our relationship, but after all, she does live with her father and stepmother.”
“By the way, where is she?”
“When I left her she was on the porch reading a book on physics. She reads all the time.”
Liza paused, and a thin little smile crept onto her face. “She’s . . . different, isn’t she?”
Claire laughed. “Oh, yes, and she’d be the first one to admit it. She’s proud of it. She has no time for most of her peers; she calls them ‘alien beings.’ ”
“Well, bless her. I just hope she makes it into adulthood without too much trauma.”
“Now, that would insult her. She thinks she’s already there.”
Liza laughed, and the sound echoed hollowly off the outbuildings and disappeared into the woods surrounding the property. Just then Ralph emerged from behind the toolshed, his belly skimming the long grass, a predatory look in his eyes: he was hunting. Claire pointed to him.
“Look. Even Ralph has turned into a different animal up here. In town all he thinks about is food; but now look at him.”
“He’s still thinking about food, only this time it’s still moving.”
Claire laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just that—well, life suddenly seems so . . . unsafe, I guess.”
Liza squinted at her. The sun had climbed up over the tree line and was shining brightly in a cloudless sky. “When did it ever feel safe?”
“Oh, in childhood, I guess . . . for a while.”
“Really? You had a nice childhood.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did . . .”
“I had a strange visit last night,” said Liza, pulling at a stubborn weed with long roots.
“Oh?”
“Yeah . . . it was odd.”
“What? What was strange?” said Meredith, appearing suddenly around the side of the house. “What—are you afraid it’s unsuitable for my young ears?” she said, seeing Liza’s hesitation.
“Meredith, Liza and I are talking,” said Claire.
Meredith threw herself down on the grass. “God, you sound just like my father,” she said with as much disgust as she could muster. She lay on her stomach kicking at the ground with her bare toes.
“Grown-ups have a tendency to all sound alike,” said Liza. “We’re boring that way.”
Meredith rolled over onto her elbow and looked at Liza. “You should have kids. You’d be a good parent.”
Feeling a little jealous, Claire said, “Meredith, why don’t you go in and make some tea for us all and we’ll come in and join you in a few minutes?”
Meredith got up and brushed herself off. “Okay. But don’t think I don’t see your technique; you’re distracting me so you guys can talk.”
“Curses, foiled again!” said Liza.
“Meredith—” Claire began, but Meredith was already heading toward the house.
“I’m going, I’m going,” she said.
“And put some shoes on,” Claire called after her.
They heard the screen door bang shut and Liza laughed softly. “You might as well be her mother,” she said. “She’s playing you as if you were.”
What about me? thought Claire. How am I playing it? “So what was your visit?” she said to Liza.
“Well, it was Evelyn Gardner.”
“Evelyn? What did she want?”
Liza stood up and brushed the dirt from her overalls. “At first it was hard to tell; she was pretty upset.”
“Upset?”
“It seems she discovered some photographs in the glove compartment of Roger’s car.”
“What kind of photos?”
Liza ran her hand across her forehead, where little beads of sweat had gathered under her blond bangs. “Kiddie porn.”
Claire swallowed hard. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah, I know; it is pretty upsetting. I don’t blame Evelyn for needing to talk to someone; I just don’t know why it had to be me. I mean, doesn’t she have any friends?”
“Well, maybe it’s the kind of thing you can’t talk about to friends.”
“What’s she going to do about it?”
“I guess she’ll have to confront him about it. Either that or go to the police.”
“Wow. That’s the first clue she had about it?”
“Apparently. I mean, I didn’t ask about the details of their personal life. Frankly, I didn’t want to know.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Well, I don’t envy her, that’s for sure.” Liza bent down and picked up her gardening tools. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go have some lunch.”
Meals at Ravenscroft were a hodgepodge of various kinds of cuisine: brown rice and broccoli were ubiquitous, and there was a conspicuous absence of animal protein. From what Claire could see, about half the people at the house were vegetarians, and almost no one ate red meat. (Liza called it “Arts Colony Chic.”) While Claire thought the emphasis on vegetables was good, after days of looking at plates of vegetarian stir-fry, she longed for a big juicy steak.
The major exception to this spartan aesthetic was Terry Nordstrom who deliberately flaunted his Middle American tastes before this collection of “effete artistes,” as he called them. And so as people chomped their kale and scallions and Chinese cabbage, the kitchen would fill with the aroma of Terry’s London broil and pork ribs, clogging the air with the odor of grilled flesh; even upstairs in the hallway you could smell the thick aroma of carnivorous cooking.
If the other residents were irritated by this—and Claire was pretty sure Terry hoped they were—they said nothing. When she and Liza entered the kitchen, the only person at the counter was Gary Robinson. He wore a black sweatshirt, which looked at though it had been ironed, over crisply pristine khakis. His shoes—he wore penny loafers without socks—were shiny and unspoiled, and even his hands were immaculately manicured. Most of the painters at Ravenscroft had chafed, paint-stained hands with torn nails, red from chemicals and dotted with a myriad of cuts from matting knives.
Who Killed Dorian Gray? Page 11
