Disillusions

by Seth Margolis

  Chapter 16

  The funeral was held on Wednesday at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Sohegan. The family huddled on one side of the mahogany casket, a few feet from the freshly dug grave: Russell and Maxine Cunningham, Nick Lawrence, and Tess. The Piacevics stood nearby, next to Gwen.

  Nick had asked her to come to look after Tess. “I wouldn’t bring her at all, but the old man insists.” He frowned and glanced away. “And I’m in no position to refuse him anything.”

  Cemeteries often occupy the choicest real estate in the community, just as funeral homes are often the grandest structures in town, and the Mount Hope cemetery was no exception. It was located on a hillside overlooking the Ondaiga Valley; few private homes in Sohegan enjoyed so open and peaceful a vista. The Cunningham plot was at its highest point, with a view in all directions. There were huge granite memorials to Russell and Florence Cunningham, Priscilla’s grandparents, and an even larger memorial to Russell Cunningham III, festooned with carved angels and garlands and an inscription: ETERNALLY OURS. The day was very hot, the air choked with humidity.

  The small band of mourners were the focus of a thousand eyes. A large crowd had gathered at the entrance to the cemetery, which was located about three miles north of town. Two police officers kept the spectators outside the cemetery gates. Gwen saw their faces from inside the second of two rented limousines as they drove in: some familiar from her days at the Mecca, most not, all straining to see through the tinted glass, hoping for a glimpse of the town’s most celebrated family, now its most notorious. Hovering above the cemetery, all but drowning out the minister’s sermon, was a news helicopter.

  “…Cut down while trying to save the child she loved so dearly.” The Reverend Michael Leeper was tall and gangly, about fifty, Gwen guessed. Sweat poured from his face onto his prayer book, which he looked up from only to cast sympathetic glances at Maxine Cunningham. His voice held little conviction.

  Gwen was just as happy to lose most of the eulogy to the clatter of the helicopter. Leeper couldn’t possibly have known Priscilla any better than she had, and the empty words would only exacerbate her discomfort at being there. She studied Maxine Cunningham while Leeper carried on. Just over five feet tall, she was as thin and frail as a young girl. Priscilla had inherited her father’s athletic build and strong features, his resolute jaw and sharp, almost fierce cheekbones. But she’d gotten her mother’s thin, reproving lips and, most noticeably, her bird-furtive hazel eyes. Maxine’s grief carried an anxious edge; every few moments she glanced up at the helicopter, as if expecting an airborne attack.

  Russell Cunningham held Tess, who also gazed up at the hovering helicopter. The old man appeared more angry than heartbroken as he glowered at the flower-laden coffin. The Piacevics, standing a few feet from each other, looked sheepishly at the ground in front of them, as if expecting to be evicted with the rest of the rubberneckers.

  “God in his infinite wisdom and with boundless mercy will watch over Priscilla, darling Priscilla, as she—”

  “Mama?”

  Leeper, mouth still open, turned to Tess.

  “Mama?” Tess was staring behind her grandfather’s back. Everyone turned to follow her gaze. Gwen saw the old man’s face brighten momentarily, then darken when his daughter didn’t emerge through the thicket of monuments and headstones.

  Tess began kicking her grandfather, still crying “mama.” Nick reached for her, but she turned away. Gwen stepped around the grave, and as she walked in front of Nick she saw a flash of rage cross his face, a look she’d never seen before, and would never forget. He looked almost ugly. She took Tess from the old man and hurried down the hill, away from the grave site.

  Leeper’s eulogy grew fainter and fainter as she walked. After a few minutes Tess was calm again. Gwen let her toddle among the headstones as she pointed out the carved angels, the crosses, the flowers.

  But she saw none of it herself, not really. That expression on Nick’s face as he watched his daughter call for Priscilla—what was it? Rage, yes, but at what, or whom? Could he really resent his daughter’s calling for her mother rather than for him? Only when he was practicing did his features assume that darkly abstracted quality, but at the piano his preoccupation was attractive, even erotic. At the grave site just now he’d looked frightening.

  “Miss Amiel?”

  She turned, startled. Dwight Hawkins approached her from the main drive, wearing a tie and white shirt, a sports jacket draped over his shoulder.

  “Did I frighten you?” he said.

  He stopped a few feet from her. The question seemed loaded, somehow, with a hidden subtext: Are you frightened of something?

  She shook her head.

  “Kind of a small turnout for our most distinguished family.”

  “Mr. Cunningham requested only the immediate family.”

  Hawkins pointed to the crowd of spectators outside the pillared gates to the cemetery.

  “Big disappointment to the peanut gallery.”

  “I guess they’ll find some other way to express their grief.”

  The sarcasm seemed to stymie him momentarily. Tess yawned. Gwen picked her up.

  “It’s warm for June,” he said, glancing around. “Eleventh day in a row above ninety, that’s a record for Ondaiga County. There’s a front stalled south of the Ohio Valley. Until it moves, we’re going to roast.” He sighed and looked at her. “The FBI ran a background check on everyone connected to Priscilla Lawrence—husband, parents, the Piacevics. And you. I was just looking over the report.”

  She felt her heart beat against Tess’s tummy. “No prior convictions,” she said, trying to sound unconcerned. “No arrests.”

  He actually laughed. “Yes, that was a disappointment. Still, you had quite a nice life downstate. Nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, nice store. Then you sold your business and moved here? Why?”

  “I wanted a small town, clean air, good schools for my son.”

  “The schools stink,” he said, and she almost laughed until she realized that he was studying her. “You’d have to go to bayou Louisiana to find worse college board scores.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I have no kids,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

  His tone had turned aggressive, but she found herself warming to Dwight Hawkins. When he’d said “no kids” just now, he’d sounded almost apologetic.

  “The truth?” she said. “I’d been driving all night, I felt tired, so I got off the highway at the first exit with a motel sign. That was here.”

  “You don’t seem like a person who leaves things up to chance.”

  She felt a shiver of vulnerability. He was right, she’d always planned every step of her life. Then Jimmy was born, and her sense of control began to wane with every midnight feeding, every infant cold, every crying jag she couldn’t diagnose, let alone alleviate. When things got bad with Barry, she’d tried at first to hold it together, summon that old self-reliance. It hadn’t worked. So she’d exercised perhaps the last bit of control she had left to her: she got the hell out of town. From the moment she crossed the George Washington Bridge, she’d lived pretty much from day to day.

  “Is there something you want?” she said.

  He looked behind her. She turned and saw the funeral breaking up. Tess had fallen asleep in her arms.

  “The FBI report mentioned you owned a gun.”

  Tess’s eyes opened briefly, then closed; she must have squeezed her too hard.

  “I used to own one.”

  “The report says there’s a twenty-two caliber Browning registered in your name, purchased in nineteen eighty-two. Did you sell it, Miss Amiel?”

  “My husband, Barry, insisted I buy it, to protect me at the store. I never wanted it, and I never used it.”

  “Why didn’t he buy it himself, then?”

  “He thought I’d have an easier time registering it. He had a drunk driving charge a few years back.” That, and a history of
problems with the police dating back to his teenage years, when he’d been involved with a rough gang in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. Only when his father’s cousin hired him on his construction crew did Barry find his calling. He had a genius for building things. He could grasp the scope of the most complex projects almost instantly, breaking them down to discrete components and quickly conjuring up a game plan for completing the work as quickly and inexpensively as possible. For a while there he’d been one of the most successful contractors in Manhattan. They’d met when she hired him to renovate her store. His references had been impeccable.

  “The DWI charge was in the FBI report, too. Where is the gun now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A semiautomatic handgun isn’t something you misplace.”

  “When I sold my store I brought it home. I left it there when Jimmy and I moved up here. My husband must have it.”

  “He sold everything you left in the apartment.”

  “He…” This was news. Not exactly surprising, but troubling all the same. An inventory flashed through her mind. The tapestry-covered sofa she’d had custom-made in a binge of extravagance, the dining-room table she’d found on a buying trip to southern France, Jimmy’s dresser, which she’d stripped and painted during the last weeks of her pregnancy. “He must have sold the gun, too,” she managed to say.

  “Are you sure you left it in New York City?”

  “Yes, I’m—what’s this about?”

  “The bullet that killed Priscilla Lawrence came from a Browning twenty-two.” His eyes looked right into hers.

  “But not necessarily my Browning.” She would not mention the trace metal test. He must know she passed, and she was damned if she was going to sound defensive.

  “Until we find the gun, we won’t know for sure. When did you last see your husband?”

  “I told the FBI, the day I left New York City.”

  “Not since?”

  “No.”

  “Did the Lawrences have any visitors in the past few weeks? An unexpected delivery, strangers hanging around, anything?”

  “No, life at Penaquoit is pretty dull, actually, the same thing every—wait, there was one person. Valerie Goodwin, a friend of the Lawrences from New York.”

  He took out a small notepad. “Valerie Goodwin? Any address?”

  “No. Didn’t Nick Lawrence mention her visit?”

  “He might have,” Hawkins said. “Did you observe anything unusual about this Valerie Goodwin?”

  “She seemed…” What should she say, that Valerie seemed unusually close to Tess for a godparent? That she’d seen her and Priscilla sharing a rather intimate moment in the basement? What good could possibly come from stirring that pot?

  “She seemed very close to all of them,” Gwen said after a pause.

  “Nothing else? You were about to say something more.”

  She shook her head and watched the funeral party heading for the limos. Nick and the Piacevics turned back frequently to watch her and Hawkins.

  “Did you ever find out where Priscilla went the morning she was killed?” she asked.

  “Went?”

  “She was out when I got there, at nine, and didn’t come back until almost eleven. Didn’t anyone mention that?”

  He slowly shook his head.

  “Nick Lawrence was pretty upset about it, asked Priscilla where she was. She told him she went for a drive.”

  “With her daughter missing?” Hawkins glanced away, trying to make sense of this.

  “I should join them,” Gwen said.

  “Of course. Just be careful, Miss Amiel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked up and shook his head at the shimmering sky, his eyes almost reproachful.

  “They both think they’re above the rest of us, Russell Cunningham and his son-in-law. They may live here, but they don’t live among us. You mean nothing to them, remember that. When push comes to shove, you’re not family, so you don’t count.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, then hurried around the side of the hill toward the small funeral party, moving awkwardly under Tess’s sleeping weight. One by one the mourners stopped and stared at her walking away from the detective—Maxine and Russell, then Nick, then the Piacevics.

  She meant nothing to them? She didn’t count?

  Then why were they staring at her and Hawkins, every one of them, making no attempt to disguise their interest, their faces taut with concern?

  Chapter 17

  Thursday, the day after the funeral, was disconcertingly uneventful. The FBI and county police were already scaling back their local operations, vowing to the press—and to Russell Cunningham personally—that they’d continue the search for the kidnappers from their better-equipped home bases. There just wasn’t much point to sticking around Sohegan, where every possible lead had been thoroughly investigated. The kidnapper and the money were quite obviously elsewhere.

  Gwen stopped in town for some groceries that morning on the way to Penaquoit and sensed a heavy air of disappointment. Sohegan was Brigadoon, settling back to sleep after a few glorious hours in the limelight. Only the half dozen or so glistening black Ford Crown Victorias attested to the FBI’s continued, if diminishing, presence. Smoked-glass windows completely obscured the occupants, lending a ghostly aura to their fleeting appearances around town.

  Newspaper reports of the investigation offered little new information. Priscilla Lawrence had been killed by a single .22-caliber bullet, which had pierced her heart, exited her body through her right shoulder, and lodged in a tree on the west side of the ravine—a silver birch, most articles mentioned. One other bullet was recovered, this one in the dirt about two feet from Priscilla’s body. Tiny black orlon fibers had been found clinging to the bark of a tree—a Scotch pine—about five and a half feet up from the ground, also on the west side of the ravine. The gunman (or woman, the articles all noted) must have rested his (or her) head against the tree while observing Russell Cunningham deposit the duffel bag, allowing the fibers from the knit ski mask to become snagged on the bark. Shoe prints had been made, but no details of size or make had been released.

  Gwen tiptoed around the mansion all day as she went about her duties, sensing some ill-defined danger in the sepulchral silence. Priscilla Cunningham’s absence, it turned out, was a much more potent force in the house than her presence had ever been. Before the kidnapping, Gwen could work at Penaquoit two days straight without seeing her. Now, every time she entered a room, she half expected to see Priscilla, stern-faced, accusatory, a finger holding her place in a magazine.

  “You’ve got a guilty conscience,” Sheila informed her that evening. She’d invited Gwen and Jimmy for dinner. Betsy had cooked a runny vegetarian lasagna, which Jimmy hadn’t touched. Gwen managed to eat a respectable amount by washing it down with half a bottle of Chianti. They ate at a splintery picnic table in the backyard. The lawn was more dirt than grass, and Gwen noticed several dead shrubs and leafless trees. Here and there a clump of flowers managed to thrive, flashes of color that struck her as more incongruous than pleasing. Yard work, like cooking, was clearly not a high priority for Sheila and Betsy.

  “Maybe I do feel guilty,” Gwen said, “but there’s something else. Everything at Penaquoit is so…normal. Nick practices as much as ever, maybe more. Tess is completely adjusted; she practically never asks for her mother, and even when she does she settles right away for a warm bottle.”

  “What about the parents?”

  “Maxine Cunningham keeps to her own house, just like she always did. Russell…well, at least he’s acting differently. He comes over all the time now to see Tess. He and Nick basically ignore each other.”

  “She’s all Russell has,” Betsy said sadly. “The end of the Cunningham line.” Everyone in Sohegan discussed the case as if it were an episode of a favorite soap opera. No last names needed: the characters were just plain Russell, Maxine, and Nick. “It’s so tragic.”
/>   Betsy fluffed her sable-black hair, which sprouted from a central part like twin hedges. When she had the time she liked to slather on gel and mousse and God knew what else to reshape her coif. The slower her business at the salon, the more architectural her do.

  “You look like Cruella DeVil,” Jimmy had said when she opened the door that evening.

  “Cruella—you mean that dyke who likes dalmatian fur?” Betsy said. “Why, thank you, James.”

  Jimmy squinted. “Mommy, what’s a—”

  “Go see what’s on TV in the living room,” Gwen said quickly.

  “They almost lost Priscilla once before, you know,” Betsy said in an ominous voice over coffee. “Hodgkin’s disease, wasn’t it, Sheil?”

  Sheila let out a sharp sigh. “Can we please stop talking about this?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure it was Hodgkin’s,” Betsy said after making a face at her partner. “She used to go down to New York City every week for radiation or chemo and whatnot.”

  “This isn’t your hair salon, okay?” Sheila glanced from Betsy to Gwen. “Can’t we find something else to talk about besides the local gossip?”

  Betsy shot Sheila a look that was both accusatory and sad. Sheila turned away.

  “Anyway, she survived,” Betsy said to Gwen. “Full remission.”

  “I can hardly look at Russell Cunningham,” Gwen said. “He tries so hard with Tess…”

  “Does she respond?” Sheila asked.

  “She barely knew him until this week. And the way he goes about playing with her, it’s just not natural. It’s like…it’s like he wants her with him, under his watch, but doesn’t really enjoy the experience, doesn’t even expect to.”

  “He must be terrified something will happen to her,” Sheila said.

  “You can understand his perspective,” Betsy said. “Cancer, a car accident, kidnapping. The three Cs.” She started to giggle, then glanced nervously at Sheila and put a hand to her mouth. She’d had even more to drink than Gwen. “Sorry.”