Crooked Heart

by Cristina Sumners

  Since the inheritance from her father was in fact ample to support the purchase of the house, not to mention the decorator she was about to hire, the question that niggled most seriously was the one about what was appropriate for a priest. The only thing that muffled this particular niggle was the reflection that she was giving to certain charities amounts whose total equaled the value of the house. But the bat-squeak was still faintly audible.

  She turned right on Mercer Street, walked past the pretty, wooded grounds of the Episcopal church she would later know well, and emerged suddenly—as one does in Harton—from the residential neighborhood onto bustling Main Street. She waited for the light to change, glancing at the businesses across the road, and saw the decorators she’d been told about, Elton Kimbrough Interiors. It was an understated shop front whose very modesty proclaimed that it catered to wealth. A minute later she walked in their door.

  She found herself standing on an Oriental rug in a small room containing a beautiful old wooden desk and a few marvelous chairs. There were three people there, engaged in efficient conversation that they broke off at the sound of the opening door. All three looked at Kathryn, performing the same split-second scan on her that she was performing on them.

  Kathryn, for her part, cataloged a simply dressed and severely beautiful receptionist/secretary sitting at the desk, and an elegant couple standing near it: a diminutive woman, dark, curvaceous, and pretty, and a good-looking man, also dark, but very tall. The woman was wearing an exquisite rose-colored silk dress over which was draped a stunning scarf in lavender and white. The man was impeccable in an understated navy pinstripe suit that must have cost every penny as much as the clothes the woman was wearing, but made less noise about it. As Kathryn favored the unobtrusive, she was predisposed to prefer the man, the more so as the woman was wearing a face that had taken her forty-five minutes to put on and four hundred dollars to pay for. Kathryn decided (correctly, in fact, though she was never to know it) that inside the woman’s dainty Italian shoes, her toenails were painted pale pink.

  The Elton Kimbrough team were equally accurate in their evaluation of Kathryn: an attractive young woman of about thirty, chestnut hair expensively cut, and a classic shirtdress in a blue and white cotton print of stylized flowers that made both the Kimbrough women think, “Saks.” They were perhaps slightly puzzled by her, as she was decades younger than their average customer, but she obviously represented money—her own or possibly her parents’—so she was welcome.

  The man spoke first. He smiled winningly, wished Kathryn a good morning, and asked if he could help her, with a hopeful expression that clearly indicated that if he couldn’t, it would ruin his day. Kathryn smiled back and said diffidently that she’d just bought Number Thirty-four, Alexander Street, and she was looking for—

  The rest of it got lost in the general enthusiasm. The partners exclaimed and actually clapped their hands with pleasure (“Oh, wonderful! Congratulations! How superb! My dear girl, it’s the Real Thing, but of course you know that—1753, I was told!”) and even the alabaster receptionist raised her shapely brows and almost smiled.

  George Kimbrough brushed past Carolyn Stanley, and seizing Kathryn’s hand offered his full name as if it were a gift, then tossed in “and this is Carolyn”—effectively making her sound like his assistant. He began to draw his prize toward one of the two doors in the back wall, but Kathryn resisted him long enough to shake hands with Carolyn and look inquiringly at the ice princess at the desk.

  Carolyn smiled with genuine warmth and said, dropping a hand on the princess’s shoulder, “And this is Patricia Clyde, who keeps us organized.” Kathryn shook hands with Patricia as well, noting out of the corner of her eye George’s momentary impatience. A twentieth of a second after it would have been grossly rude to interrupt the handshake, George gently pulled Kathryn’s elbow in the direction of his office again, using his other hand to give a couple of pats to that shoulder of Patricia’s that Carolyn’s hand had just vacated. Kathryn saw Patricia stiffen.

  About fifteen minutes later, Kathryn had come to several conclusions. The first was that God was punishing her for her extravagant materialism. The second was that George Kimbrough had nothing to recommend him but his tailor and his dentist. She wondered how she could ever have thought his smile winning. In fact, she thought, warming to her theme, the chief trouble with George was that somebody had once told him he had a wolfish grin and he had taken it as a compliment. She had further concluded that he lacked the brains God gave geese.

  These reflections gave her small comfort as she gazed despairingly at a sample of silk wallpaper in stripes of cream and gold that would not have been out of place at Versailles, and started for the third time to say, “I don’t think I’m making myself clear.” And for the third time, she got no further than “I don’t think” before George interrupted her to assure her that he had lots of experience with pre-Revolutionary houses. He didn’t quite go so far as to say that he would do the thinking for her, but his whole manner made it clear that she would be extremely sensible to allow him to do so.

  At first Kathryn did not recognize the brief knock and Carolyn’s murmured apology as her salvation, perhaps because she was too busy glaring at the cream-and-gold wallpaper. But Carolyn, come to fetch a sample book, heard George say that Ms. Koerney said she wanted something simple, took one look at Ms. Koerney’s face, and promptly staged a rescue.

  She looked pensively at Kathryn and said, “You know, my dear, I think I’ve got a wallpaper that looks just like your dress.”

  Kathryn looked up. This sounded altogether more promising. She started to say something, but unsurprisingly, George beat her to it.

  “Like that dress?” he said with knitted brows, obviously displeased. “I don’t know of any wallpaper like that.”

  “I can’t remember quite where I saw it. . . .” Carolyn shut her eyes and laid two fingers across her nicely powdered nose in a good imitation of attempted recollection. Kathryn could never quite remember how the little woman had managed it from there, but within a few minutes she was in Carolyn’s office with the door shut against a baffled and irked George, and listening to Carolyn utter magic words: “You don’t want it to look like it was done by a decorator, do you?”

  And so it was that Kathryn got just what she wanted for her house, and over a couple of months developed a sizable respect for the woman whose polished perfection had initially repelled her. Not that she found her a kindred spirit; Carolyn was far too fond of saying “my Mercedes” when “my car” would have sufficed, and Kathryn could have done without the artfully casual references to “when I did the Governor’s Mansion.”

  But Kathryn forgave her these lapses, not merely because she was awfully good at her job, but because one day Carolyn took her to lunch at Leboeuf’s, examined the bill afterward, called the waiter back, and said, “You made a mistake in the addition. You’ve undercharged me twenty dollars.”

  (At this point in Kathryn’s narrative, Tom Holder wondered dizzily how large a lunch check would have to be before somebody could make a twenty-dollar error in it.)

  But for Kathryn, whose parents had reared her in standards of financial honesty that would have made the Boy Scouts look lax by comparison, the point was that Carolyn would not take advantage of the waiter, who might have had to make the difference good out of his own pocket if the mistake were discovered.

  Tom, however, could not figure out how honesty and professional ability could account for Carolyn’s mysterious disappearance in San Francisco, and he said so.

  “Actually,” Kathryn confessed, “that one completely stumps me. I can’t picture Carolyn failing to meet her professional obligations. Very unlike her.”

  “That suits me fine. I’m working on the idea that she either witnessed or helped with Grace’s killing, and has run away so we can’t find her. I mean, if you’ve got a murder on your mind, you probably wouldn’t give a damn about your professional obligations, would you?”
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  “I simply cannot imagine Carolyn killing anybody.”

  “Happens to people. They reach a breaking point, get into a rage—”

  “That’s what I can’t picture. Carolyn in a rage. She’s always completely in control. Of herself, and of everybody else.”

  “Well, O.K., she didn’t do the killing, but she knows her husband did, or thinks he did, so she runs away to escape from a situation she can’t face up to.”

  Kathryn shook her head. “There’s something sort of, I don’t know, iron-clad about Carolyn’s honesty. I can’t believe she wouldn’t stay and face the music.”

  In his years on the job, Tom had heard a lot of people say they couldn’t believe that so-and-so could possibly do what so-and-so had obviously just done. He said, with ever so slightly conspicuous patience, “Well, you’ve never seen her react to watching her husband kill their next-door neighbor, have you?”

  Kathryn felt singularly foolish. Tom must think her naive, if not totally dim. She gave him a rueful smile. “You’d have to show me movies of it.”

  “Only wish I had some,” he said, unaware of the dent he had made in Kathryn’s oversensitive ego. He stared for a moment at the bottom of his empty glass, but waved her back to her seat as she rose, offering him what would have been his second refill. “No, no, I don’t need any more. What I need is for you to tell me you know Bill Stanley, too.”

  Alas, Kathryn and Bill had met only once.

  It had been a golden September afternoon, but Kathryn had had little time to appreciate it. It was four forty-five in the afternoon, she was up to her ears in papers that needed grading, and instead of grading them she was rooting through the chaos sprawled across her eighteen square feet of desktop, looking for some fabric swatches she seemed to have irretrievably lost. She had faithfully promised Carolyn that she would return them by Thursday afternoon at the latest so George could show them to another client on Friday. While she searched, she upbraided herself for her procrastination (she should have looked for them earlier in the week), her untidiness (how could she possibly have gotten her workroom this messy in the five weeks she had lived in the house?), and her absurd optimism (she should have known that the house would never be finished before classes started at the seminary).

  When she finally found the little sheaf of fabric squares (she had used them as a bookmark in a large volume of patristic theology), she looked at the clock and mildly swore. It was seven minutes past five, and experience had taught her that there wasn’t the slightest possibility that Elton Kimbrough Interiors was still open. Swearing again, Kathryn began another search, this time for the small card on which Carolyn had written her home telephone number. Fortunately this was not buried as deep as the fabric swatches, so it was only about five-thirty when Kathryn pulled her Audi to a stop in front of Carolyn’s mock-Tudor house in Canterbury Park.

  The doorbell was answered by a short, slightly pudgy man in glasses and a denim apron who gave her a delighted smile and said, “So this is Kathryn the Great! Do come in, Kathryn, we’re just back in the kitchen, pretending to be cooks, come help us get to the bottom of the cooking sherry, oh, sorry, I’m Bill, how do you do, no, no, I insist, you can’t just run away, Carolyn would never forgive me if I let you go, besides, she’s told me all about you and you’ve got to give me the chance to find out how much she’s been exaggerating.”

  Kathryn laughed and submitted to this cajolery, allowing herself to be led past an exquisite pastel living room in which everything looked fragile and feminine (Pure Carolyn, Kathryn thought) to a spacious white kitchen at the back of the house, where the lady in question was chopping parsley with a large and familiar-looking knife.

  “Come in, my dear, come in,” Carolyn said warmly. “Thanks so much for bringing those wretched things, George might otherwise have gone distracted, just put them over there on the breakfast table.” She waved the knife at the table, and her husband pretended to fall back in terror. She gave him a tolerant smile.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “she’s not really dangerous, she’s just trying to let the parsley know who’s boss.” He was pouring a glass of sherry, which he promptly pressed into Kathryn’s hand. “Letting me know, too; that’s a holy terror of a knife she’s using, you wouldn’t catch me coming near it; here, sit, sit, no, I’m for stainless steel, shiny and blunt.”

  Kathryn declined to sit, instead walking over to where Carolyn had just put down the knife, and picking it up. “Carbon steel Sabatier,” she said appreciatively, running a finger along the flat of the blade, which was gunmetal gray and mottled with use—as any well-used carbon steel knife would be—but ever so lightly oiled, which meant Carolyn took good care of it. “I have a set of these myself, and I have never found a stainless steel knife that can take an edge the way these can.”

  “What did I tell you?” Carolyn crowed triumphantly over Bill, who clapped a hand to his forehead and groaned, “Oh, God, not another one!”

  “Another one what?” Kathryn asked.

  “Knife snob,” said Bill in a voice eloquent of despair. “But I forgive you,” he added magnanimously to Kathryn, “chiefly because I want to stay on your good side.”

  “And why do you want to do that?”

  “I know!” Carolyn chimed in. “He wants to see the inside of your house.”

  “He is most welcome to do so.” Kathryn bowed graciously to Bill, who instantly bowed back, murmuring, “Thank you, kind lady.”

  “I’m throwing a party as soon as Carolyn gets through making it gorgeous. You’re both invited, of course.”

  This produced little cries of pleasure from both of them, which turned to cries of disappointment when Kathryn put down her scarcely touched sherry and announced she had to be leaving. They both followed her to the front door, and she was halfway down the walk to her car before they finally gave up imploring her to stay longer.

  Come the evening of the party, however, Carolyn arrived with the ice princess instead of her husband: “Patricia’s standing in for Bill, I knew you wouldn’t mind, he’s got some business thing he can’t get out of.” So that was all Kathryn had ever seen of Bill Stanley.

  CHAPTER 21

  It wasn’t much. Tom, forgetting his manners, said so, making Kathryn feel singularly useless.

  She had tried to impress him that morning, and apparently failed; now she had failed again. She felt suddenly cross and tired. “I hate this business anyway,” she complained. “None of it makes sense, and it’s obvious I’m the world’s worst judge of character and I never knew these people at all. Here’s Carolyn, who is a monster of rectitude, running around San Francisco, hiding from the police; here’s her husband, who looks like the proverbial guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly, murdering his next-door neighbor; and look who’s the innocent bystander—the unspeakably obnoxious George Kimbrough!”

  “You know, I’m glad to hear you say that, because I’ve been feeling kind of guilty for not feeling sorrier for him about his wife.”

  “I’m astonished that you didn’t immediately prefer him to Bill Stanley as chief suspect.”

  “Do you know, that never even crossed my mind?”

  “Why on earth not? He’s so smarmy, I’d have thought it would be your first instinct.”

  Tom thought for a moment. “I guess it’s because I’ve talked to killers, and I’ve talked to people who’ve had family go missing. They’re different. It isn’t just that one is guilty and the other isn’t. It’s something like, the killer knows too much and is trying to pretend he doesn’t know it, and the guy whose wife or kid is missing doesn’t know enough. He’s confused, he keeps asking questions, he keeps saying things like ‘I don’t understand, I just don’t understand.’ And that was George all over when I talked to him on Monday night. He just didn’t understand, he just didn’t know where the hell she could be, he just didn’t know what was going on.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Oh, yeah, it was real. Trust me, on this one I’m the
one who speaks with authority and not as the scribes. George Kimbrough called us Monday night because he had no earthly idea what had happened to his wife. And he calls the station three times a day because he still has no idea, and it’s driving him crazy.”

  “O.K., if you insist,” she sighed.

  “Who’s insisting? I’m stuck with it.” He sighed, too. “I guess I really ought to be rolling.” He stood up reluctantly.

  Kathryn, rising, was reluctant, too. He was leaving and she hadn’t impressed him a bit. “Well,” she began unhopefully as she walked him to the door, “I haven’t the foggiest idea what Carolyn is up to, or why Bill thought getting arrested was so hilarious, but I admit that what really baffles the hell out of me is the two bags in the bedroom that turn into no bags on the plane that turn into one bag at the Mark—” She simply stopped. The only motion she made was to close her eyes. Oh, God, she thought, give this to me. After a few seconds she opened her eyes and said carefully, as though afraid movement would frighten the thought away, “The bellboy at the Mark Hopkins, he said the bag looked new. And Carolyn was late getting to the hotel. Bill expected her to have been there when he called. What time does that flight get to San Francisco, and was it on time?”

  “Five minutes after seven, and yes.”

  “Lots of department stores and shopping centers stay open till nine these days.”

  Tom was grinning at her. “I’ll make you an honorary sergeant. She went from the airport to a store and bought a new suitcase—”

  “And pajamas and a toothbrush,” added Kathryn triumphantly, “and a change of clothes. Possibly several changes of clothes.”

  “So she ran off to California without her luggage and bought some more when she got there. Now make my day and tell me why she did that.”