The Bluest Blood

by Gillian Roberts

  “I can’t take this, Loren. Not today, not after all that’s already happened, not since—”

  “What? What happened? Did something else happen since Harvey? What?”

  “Dad, you know how Mom—”

  “The police, Jake missing, his friend a runaway—that’s some of what’s been happening, just today, let alone every other day—and you weren’t here, so what right do you have to say anything about any of it? You were never here and now you barge in and want to—”

  “Excuse us—”

  “He didn’t say that, Mom. He really hasn’t had a chance to say much of—why don’t we let Dad—”

  “Dad! Dad! As if he was ever a proper father to you. And then, when Harvey tried to fill in, to make up for the missing pieces, you hated him, treated him like—”

  “Mom!”

  “Betsy!”

  “Excuse me!”

  I wasn’t the only one to gasp. Everyone wheeled in the direction of The Voice.

  Mackenzie didn’t often employ that I-am-the-law-and-must-be-obeyed tone, which had the power to realign reality. It belonged in a comic book as a magic attribute of the normally soft-spoken Southern fellow, and had to be used with care. But it worked—even with the Ulrich-Spier clan.

  “Your issues are personal, private.” His voice was back to its soft-edged melodic self. All three of their mouths hung slightly agape, listening intently. “This’s a family thing you three should deal with on your own, without spectators. Therefore, we are takin’ our leave. You have that?”

  “Who are you?” Loren Ulrich demanded.

  His question dispelled the Mackenzie magic, restarted Betsy’s static and squeaks, delayed our leave-taking and implied that we, not he, were interlopers, that he knew everyone involved in Jake’s life, except for us.

  “This is Miss Pepper,” Jake said. “She’s head of journalism class, the newspaper. You know, the columns I send you? And this is her…ah…”

  My ah extended his hand. “C. K. Mackenzie,” he said.

  “He’s a policeman!” Betsy’s voice had reshaped itself into a pointed wire that pierced soft tissue. “A detective!”

  Loren Ulrich looked from Mackenzie to his son and back again, waiting for an explanation. Mackenzie provided none.

  “We have to leave,” I said.

  “Wait!” Jake said. “Can’t we—couldn’t we all sit down again and talk? I would like you to meet my father. Couldn’t we have a normal kind of time?” He flashed a look at his mother that combined pleading and fear.

  She pursed her lips. Normal was obviously a distasteful concept to her.

  “What did he do, Detective?” Loren Ulrich asked. “My son—you brought him here because…? Did he do something wrong? He’s not involved in this…” He shook his head. He wasn’t going to finish the thought.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Jake said. That wasn’t quite the truth. “Dad, we have to—”

  Loren Ulrich shushed his son by putting both of his hands, palms forward, at chest height, then fanning them from side to side like out-of-synch windshield wipers. He was taking charge and he wanted no input except what he requested, as he requested it. I wondered whether Jake found his actions as offensive as I did.

  Which led me to wonder whether Betsy Ulrich Spiers had always been an hysteric, or whether it had taken the combination of her overconfident first husband and fanatical second to produce the mess she now was.

  I’d always worried why clever Jane Eyre never questioned what had made Bertha Rochester insane. Rochester wouldn’t have married a raving lunatic, so the question was the same as it was with Betsy Spiers—did the husbands do it? For the first time, I considered Betsy and Loren with interest.

  “What kind of detective are you?” Loren Ulrich’s eyes had never left Mackenzie.

  “Homicide.”

  “Jesus.” Ulrich’s glance shot to his son and stayed there, and his bravado dissipated. Then his expression brightened. He had puzzled something through and he was in charge again. “I’ve got it,” he said. “You’re just asking questions, eh? About Harvey, his murder. Awful thing that was. Hideous way to go. Where are you with the case?”

  “Not anywhere. That happened out in Radnor, not in the city. I’m with the Phila—”

  “Terrible thing,” Loren said. He didn’t listen well. Luckily his beat was concrete, brick, and steel. He spread his arms wide, embracing the room and its contents. “But you don’t, you can’t, no matter how…grating Harvey was, you can’t imagine anyone here had anything to do with it, can you?”

  Which made it apparent that he thought either his ex-wife or his son had. And wanted Mackenzie to know that. I wondered which he suspected, and if the idea pained him at all.

  “You hate me, don’t you?” Betsy screeched. “You’ve hated me since the day I left, and you want me to go to the gas chamber! How could you suggest that I killed Harvey—I’m too weak!”

  “Of course you are,” he said, his eyes wide. He looked at Mackenzie and me, searching for a sympathetic glance. “No matter how you felt, what he did to you or what you may have said, you are simply too…insufficiently…linear to arrange something that heinous.”

  Betsy, as well she might, looked stymied.

  Was he saying that Betsy couldn’t think in a straight line and therefore couldn’t contrive a murder? A damnably weak defense, and more like a barbed accusation—as he well knew.

  “Are you saying I could have done it?” Betsy screamed. “Nobody thinks that except you, because you always act as if I’m insane, but it’s you who’s crazy! The police questioned me and went away. And how could I have done it? He was too heavy. Besides, everybody knows I never went to those bonfires.”

  The bonfires the Moral Ecologists said they didn’t start, right? Someday we’d have to pursue that line.

  “I was here, alone, all night,” she went on. “When the police came, they knew—I was here alone. They have the harlot—she did it and they know it.”

  “Mom,” Jake said, “nobody accused you of anything. You don’t have to explain where you—”

  “Besides, it’s impossible. I couldn’t lift him.”

  I wondered why she said she hadn’t had the opportunity or muscle to kill her husband, not that she wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have wanted to. Possibly because her son knew the reality, must have been here for countless hysterical rants against Harvey Spiers. And it was interesting to know that the police had considered—or still did consider—her a suspect.

  But it wasn’t sufficiently interesting to convince me to waste more of my day in this unhappy household. “So!” I said. “We’ll just be on our—”

  “Did I ever once say I thought you’d killed Harvey?” Loren asked mildly, ignoring me completely. “I didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t entertain the idea.”

  Each word was uttered with so little sincerity, it seemed custom-designed to evoke another outburst, further proof of Betsy’s instability. But for once, she kept a near silence, broken only by snuffles.

  Ulrich turned back to Mackenzie. “You didn’t answer me. What’s happening with the case? What’s your relationship with my son?”

  Mackenzie’s mouth compressed with annoyance. “Mr. Ulrich,” he said, speaking even more slowly than is the norm for him, “it’s a waste of my breath to answer people who don’t listen.” He paused. “You ready to hear me now?”

  Loren nodded.

  “Miss Pepper and I, we brought Jake here this morning. The reason behind this is simple and has nothing to do with any investigations. The reason is that Jake does not have a car and I do. I was accompanyin’ Miss Pepper, and she was accompanyin’ Jake, who is her student. Therefore, my presence has nothing whatsoever to do with my professional role. Which fact I tried tellin’ you. Furthermore, even in my professional role, I am not involved in the murder of Harvey Spiers because it happened out beyond City Line, which, as you might suspect, defines the edge of the city. I am part of the Philadelphia Police Departmen
t. I work on homicides that happen inside this city. Have I made myself entirely clear? Is the geography or anything else about that still confusin’ you?”

  Loren Ulrich put his palms up in a placating gesture. Then he swiveled one wrist so that his hand was raised like a traffic cop’s, signaling halt. The excessive hand signals went with the outfit, another international, sophisticated accoutrement. “I don’t understand what Jake was doing with you in the morning in the first place. Where he found you, how he got there, why.”

  “Well, tha’s surely puzzlin’.” Mackenzie had apparently borrowed an additional Southerner’s accent to lay atop his, and he was nearly unintelligible. But gallant. “I admit I initially shared your confusion and surprise,” he added in a soft blur of near-English that sounded like, “Ahdmitah nishlysha’ed…”

  I heard him, though. Confusion and surprise, indeed. Quite a euphemism for racing across the loft and tackling Jake.

  “However,” he continued, “I came to understand that Jake was at our place merely waitin’, delayin’ his return here from a desire on his part to avoid disturbin’ his Momma too early in the day. Which is to say, it was done from the finest of impulses.”

  That was grand, since it didn’t answer a single question. Grander, when I weighed in the effect of that gibberish. And although Toronto’s pretty far from good-ol’-boy land, the soft-summer-nights accent and the guy-thing worked. Or something did. Ulrich didn’t rebound with another question.

  “In any case,” Mackenzie went on, smooth as can be, “you have fam’ly issues to deal with. So, if you’ll excuse us.”

  “I’ll explain, Dad,” Jake said, moving aside for us. “I’ll explain later.”

  “Sure! For your dad!” Betsy snapped. “Do I get an explanation? Nobody tells me anything!”

  “Thanks,” Jake told us again, and we nodded and moved toward the door, freedom, and a student-free day with Mackenzie. A weekend.

  However. There’s a proverb—Yiddish, I believe—that if you want to make God laugh, make plans. My weekend was providing the Supreme Power a veritable laff-fest because at that moment, the front door was pounded upon, and its bell rung. A very Gestapo effect.

  Betsy put her hands to her throat in an odd gesture of fear.

  “A door-to-door salesman, do you think?” Loren Ulrich said.

  I gave him points for attempting to lighten things up. I, too, tried to help. “The Jehovah’s Witnesses around here are really aggressive, aren’t they?” For once, I hoped they really were at the door.

  “Harvey wouldn’t put in a security system,” Betsy whined. “He was too trusting—look what happened to him. And there isn’t even a peephole, a way to know who is out there, and we could all be killed in a second!”

  Jake opened the door.

  “Jake Spiers?” I couldn’t see past Jake to get a sense of the speaker, but he spoke with great authority.

  “Ulrich,” Jake said. “My name’s Jake Ulrich.”

  “Correct, sorry. Jake, can we come in? We’re with the Radnor Township police, and we need to talk with you. We’d as soon keep it off the street, away from the neighbors.”

  He said it nicely enough, but it didn’t meet Betsy’s standards of acceptability. As the two men entered the living room, she shrieked “Police?” The word achieved glass-shattering pitch.

  “Mom,” Jake said, and then his shoulders sagged. He looked too weary to try anymore.

  To their credit, the policemen, both of whom were rugged and well-worn–looking, central casting’s good cops for your basic TV series, nodded and smiled as if they were quite used to caterwauling as a greeting. Maybe, in fact, they were.

  “What is this?” Loren demanded. “I’m Jake’s father. What do you want with him?”

  “Father?” the younger cop said. “His father died Wednesday.”

  “This man’s not Jake’s father, except biologically,” Betsy snapped. “He’s never behaved like a father. He’s so involved in his career, he doesn’t even live in this country.”

  Follow that logic. I dare you.

  “His stepfather was killed,” Mackenzie said. He introduced himself, showed his badge, and explained he was here socially, not professionally—an explanation that surely increased the confusion, given the company Mackenzie was opting to keep.

  “Why are you badgering my boy now?” Betsy said. “He was asleep when it happened. Griffin Roederer can vouch for that. All the Roederers can. Besides, everybody knows that harlot was behind my husband’s death. Harvey told her it was over. A woman—a tramp—scorned. So leave Jake alone!”

  “Mom, please. You’re making Harvey sound…”

  “Or Neddy Roederer. Look for the sinner, not for my son. Neddy Roederer was a fraud. A morally corrupt fraud, and Harvey knew it.”

  “Mom!”

  I assumed Jake was trying to remind her that her late husband’s whoring and blackmail plans wouldn’t help anybody’s cause. She seemed to belatedly comprehend this, and tightened her lips again.

  “I know what this must be about,” Jake said in a small voice, his eyes focused on the mud-colored carpet at his feet. “It’s about my…the stealing. Last night at the station, she was angry about everything, including that.”

  “Stealing? Oh, my God!” Betsy screamed.

  “I took two of her china boxes a while back. She has, like, a million. Tiny suitcases and typewriters and pincushions and globes. They all have hinges and open up, but they’re too small to put stuff in. I took a dog and a cat. I’m really sorry. I meant to put them back last night, but in the confusion…and of all the bad luck—that’s when she noticed them missing.”

  “Why would you steal anything?” Loren asked with his first show of real interest. “And why on earth a china cat and dog?”

  Jake swallowed. “It was kind of a joke, because I’m not allowed to have pets. But more because… I don’t know…they’re…silly. And pretty. They don’t do anything, aren’t useful. The Roederers have a lot of things like that, just because they like them. We don’t have any…” He shook his head. “I know it was wrong. But they were so little, so easy to take, and I did it, borrowed them. I can’t believe they noticed, they have so many of them. They’re in my backpack. Could I give them back to you now, maybe, and not have to…?”

  The cops looked sad, but impassive. It seemed improbable that they’d traveled here in search of a china dog and cat.

  “If you still need background, any kind of help, about Harvey Spiers, maybe I could be of assistance,” Loren said. “I knew him way back when he was a clerk in an insurance company, before his great religious conversion.”

  “Loren!” Betsy yelped. “Don’t make him sound—”

  “Yessir, thank you for the offer,” the younger detective said.

  Loren searched his pockets. “My card,” he said. Then he shook his head. “That’s useless right now. Sorry. I don’t know where to say you can reach me. I came right here from the plane.”

  “Don’t imagine you can stay here!” Betsy muttered.

  The older cop handed him a card. “If you think of anything, call. Meantime, we need to speak to you, Jake. Do you feel comfortable talking to us?”

  Jake nodded and shrugged, a conditional yes.

  “Do you want an attorney to be present?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong except take those things,” Jake said, sounding near exhaustion. “I don’t need a lawyer—unless you’re accusing me of something else. Are you?”

  The younger cop smiled and shook his head.

  “Am I some kind of a suspect?”

  The cop shook his head again. “If you’ll get a jacket,” he said.

  “You’re making a big mistake if you think Jake helped her,” Betsy Spiers said. “That slut didn’t need help. Those ropes and pulleys make hoisting a dead weight easy. Have you thought about that instead of persecuting my son?”

  I watched with fascinated horror. Didn’t she realize that anything Mother Vivien could have done,
she could have done as well? Vivien was large with fat, not muscle. And how did Betsy know about the efficiency of the ropes and pulleys if she never went to the bonfires? I looked at her with new interest.

  She seemed to realize some of this. In any case, she changed tacks. “Do you realize what you’re doing to me, taking Jake all the way out the Main Line when he isn’t even a suspect? My car isn’t working right. I’m a nervous wreck. My husband was murdered and now you’re taking my son. Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I’m sure they have good and legal reasons, Betsy,” Loren said. “And it’s only for a short while. They need Jake to verify something, isn’t that what you mean?”

  Jake had on his jacket and a Phillies cap.

  “Good,” the younger policeman said to Jake. “It’s still chilly, and they’re saying a chance of rain later, too, so the hat’s a good idea.”

  Did the law require them to be completely honest about their reasons for taking Jake with them? They couldn’t think of him as a murderer and be so paternal and concerned, could they?

  “I have a right to know what’s going on,” Betsy Spiers said. “I deserve to know what is happening concerning my husband’s”—with this, she shot a lethal, squint-eyed look at her ex-husband—“murder.”

  “Yes, ma’am, and we’ll surely try to tell you whatever—”

  “Well, you aren’t telling me now!”

  “I’ll come get you, son,” Loren said. “Don’t worry.”

  “You don’t even know the area!” Betsy had the ability to scream without raising her voice, a genuine talent. “How can you promise? It’ll be another one you break, just like all the—” She wheeled back to face the cops. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” Betsy said, pointing her finger at the cops. “He was my husband!”

  By now, I was hoping for a show of police brutality. Unfortunately, those suburban fellows were unstintingly polite. “Ma’am,” the older one said, “we definitely will, when and if we get any news about your late husband.”

  “If you don’t have news now—why take my son?”

  Jake shook his head. The night’s overload showed in the blue hollows below his eyes.