Death's Savage Passion (13 page)

“Television set,” I told Phoebe. “That’s all they could have taken. It’s the only thing that should be here that isn’t here. I don’t think I’ve ever been angry at a thief before.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Phoebe said.

“She had that jewelry box,” I said. “It was probably all junk jewelry, but it must have meant something to her. And the creep didn’t even open it.”

Phoebe planted herself in a massive overstuffed armchair. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You can’t do this.”

I righted the desk and started replacing the drawers. Part of me said we should do what Cassie had not and call the police, but I couldn’t see how it would help. It seemed much more important to return that living room to the antithesis of Miss Arbeth’s. I couldn’t think about Cassie Arbeth without getting ill.

“That woman is nine years younger than we are,” I told Phoebe. “How could she let that happen to herself?”

“It’s illegal,” Phoebe said. “We’re going to get arrested.”

“What for?” I started picking up check stubs. I could hear Phoebe’s foot tapping the floor behind me. Phoebe’s feet almost never reach the floor when she’s sitting in chairs. Tapping her foot takes an effort. Tapping her foot is a warning. “Doing this is better than leaving her in that,” I said stubbornly.

“Sarah left her in that,” Phoebe said.

“For three days. Because it was all she could do.”

“If she’d wanted to bring her to New York, she could have brought her to New York. You certainly have enough room.”

“If I’d known there was an Adrienne, I’d have invited Adrienne. She didn’t even mention it. Not even in passing.”

“You ever wonder why not?”

“This is New England, Phoebe. She didn’t mention it because she didn’t mention it. Maybe she was embarrassed about being an unwed mother. If she was an unwed mother. I don’t know.”

“What’s going to happen if she turns up here looking for her daughter and that idiot next door announces the kid’s been—For God’s sake, Pay, this is
kidnapping.”

I started on the ragged, pick-up-sticks pile of pens and pencils, making neat horizontal rows of them in the center desk drawer. I could hear Adrienne marching around above my head, pulling out drawers, moving things on wooden surfaces. “Even that hole I used to live in on Eighty-second Street was better built than this.”

“Patience.”

I turned to look at her. Her voice was stern, demanding, but she looked confused and hesitant. The last time I saw Phoebe (Weiss) Damereaux look confused and hesitant, she’d been matriculating at Greyson College for Women.

“She’s not going to come back,” I said gently. “This whole thing only makes sense if the rest of you are wrong and I’m right. You know that.”

“I know you’re taking that child across state lines, which makes it federal.”

“You got a call from someone saying she was Sarah calling from Holbrook. So did Dana. But it couldn’t have been Sarah calling from Holbrook. If she’d been here, she’d have seen Adrienne and that woman. Besides, look at this place. She’d have picked up. She wouldn’t have made a lot of long-distance calls she could have made local in the city.”

“Maybe she didn’t come to Holbrook,” Phoebe said. “That doesn’t mean she’s dead.”

“What does it mean?”

“She could have dropped out of sight.”

“Whatever for?”

“Obviously,” Phoebe said, “she’s got a whole life we know nothing about. We pegged her for an old maid, she’s got a child. We had her scenarioed in an apartment, she’s got half a house. She could have had all sorts of reasons.”

There were postcards scattered over half the carpet. I started stacking them. “You don’t believe it,” I said, “and I don’t blame you.”

Phoebe sighed. “No,” she said. “I don’t believe that. But for God’s sake, Pay, what do you think I’m going to believe? That someone murdered Sarah English? What for? That someone took her body and—”

“She was a small woman,” I said quickly. “Five feet, very thin. She wouldn’t be hard to carry.”

“Why bother?”

“To get her out of sight. So people wouldn’t know she was dead.”

“What for? I mean, dear Lord, I know you’re angry at Tony Marsh, but he’s not an amateur. If he had any plausible reason for someone to kill Sarah, if he could find some solid evidence she was dead—and he was looking—”

“I’m not saying the reason’s obvious.”

“If they were going to move Sarah, why not move you? You’re telling me this person had two people poisoned with arsenic on his hands and only moved
one.”

“There wasn’t any percentage in moving me. I practically live with Nick. I’m in the middle of a book promotion. I’m with you all the time I’m not with somebody else. I can’t go missing without its being noticed.”

Phoebe set her mouth. “The arsenic was in the Halloween candy. There are nuts like that all over the world. You ran into one.”

“Where’s Sarah English?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is Marilou Saunders lying?”

Phoebe hesitated. She didn’t like Marilou Saunders any more than I did. She certainly thought her capable of lying.

“Maybe Marilou Saunders was there,” she said. “I can’t see any reason for her to want to kill Sarah English.”

“Neither can I,” I said. “That’s not the point. We couldn’t see any reason for someone killing Julie Simms, but somebody did. Even if Marilou didn’t kill Sarah, even if she didn’t see Sarah—which she did—she’s saying she didn’t see
me,
that she wasn’t even there, and I know that’s a lie. I might have seen Sarah very sick and only thought she was dying. Until we find a body, that’s always a possibility. But Marilou was also in that room and it’s her word against mine.”

“Maybe we ought to talk to Marilou,” Phoebe said. “Maybe somebody ought to.”

“I’ve got to tape her show Friday,” I said. “I’ll take care of her when the time comes. We won’t be able to find her unless she wants to be found or Tony Marsh gets a subpoena, and I don’t think we’re going to get either. Who we have to talk to is Caroline Dooley.”

“Caroline Dooley?”

“Caroline Dooley called here looking for Sarah. We can’t trust the slob queen next door to remember what she wanted. I’m not even sure Cassie listened to what Caroline wanted. The only thing we can do is ask Caroline herself.”

“Oh,” Phoebe said.

“Logical,” I said.

“I don’t see what good it’s going to do,” Phoebe said. “But—”

There was a sound on the stairs. We both turned to see Adrienne descend, dressed in fresh starched yellow cotton, with a soft gray cardigan over her shoulders and a child’s cardboard suitcase in her hands. She walked down the stairs as if she were balancing the traditional book on her head.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and put her suitcase on the floor.

“I thought it was better to change,” she said. “The other dress was wrinkled in the back.”

“Good idea,” I said.

Phoebe wagged her head, considering. “Do you like cheese blintzes?” she asked Adrienne.

Adrienne had never heard of cheese blintzes. She was, however, “very fond of cheese.”

I
T IS NOT RESPONSIBLE
to leave a seven-year-old child alone in a large, unfurnished Manhattan apartment. Phoebe knew that. I knew that. Even Nick would know it when he finally showed up. Nick was going to be the biggest problem. Nick was going to swear. Nick was going to shout while he was swearing.

We sent Adrienne down the long hall in search of a room she liked. I explained about the lack of beds. Adrienne nodded solemnly, humoring me.

I watched her progress through the living room, hoping she’d pick something with a view—the room I’d given Sarah, for instance, that overlooked Central Park. She was very small in Myrra’s formal living room. She was also very straight-backed.

“You’re sick,” Phoebe said as soon as the child was out of sight. “You’ve been running around all day. You can’t go running around all night.”

“I tried phoning,” I said. “I couldn’t get an answer.”

“What makes you think going over there is going to be any better? If Caroline isn’t home, she isn’t home.”

I pointed to Phoebe’s watch. “It’s six-thirty. She’s probably on her way home from work. Everybody is on their way home from work.”

“I’ll go over there,” Phoebe said.

“I can’t cook,” I said.

“Oh, God,” Phoebe said. “You’ve got a six-pack of diet soda, two bottles of Heineken dark, some Devon cream, and a yogurt. We have to go to the store. Children need vegetables.”

“Santini’s delivers,” I told her. I got a scarf out of the closet and draped it around my neck, concession to Phoebe’s as yet unstated fear that I would Catch a Chill. “I’ll probably get there right when she does. I’ll ask my questions and come home.”

“You could wait to call later in the evening.”

“No.”

“Patience—”

“Hold Nick off until I get back,” I said. “Give him something that will make him lose his voice.”

Adrienne appeared from the back hall. “You really don’t have any furniture,” she said, giving me a half-shocked and thoroughly admiring look. “Not
any.”

Phoebe held her head. “I’ll call Santini’s,” she said. “I’ll make chicken. When you get back here, you’d better be ready to eat chicken.”

I hit the courtyard at a run, the street at a sprint. I was in the cab with the door closed before I saw the “No Smoking” sign. I considered lighting up anyway and telling this idiot that with two inches of bulletproof plastic between us, he wasn’t going to come in contact with anything he was allergic to anyway. I didn’t. I was too tired to argue. Even with Phoebe’s train provisions, I felt as if I hadn’t had enough to eat. My stomach was raw. There was something in there like sand, scratching me up.

I had put on a good act for Phoebe, but I couldn’t fool myself. I
was
exhausted. Worse, I was beginning to get a sneaking suspicion I should never have left the hospital. I wondered what near-fatal arsenic poisoning did to you. Was there something still going around in my bloodstream? Was my stomach going to feel like this forever? Was arsenic like LSD, with a potential for flashbacks? What would an arsenic poisoning flashback consist of?

I was trying to force myself to think of the Best Possible Question to ask Caroline Dooley when we stopped for a light at West Seventy-second. The bulletproof partition slid open. The driver was smoking something cheap wrapped in Connecticut tobacco. I got out my cigarettes.

“You don’t look dead to me,” he said.

“What?”

He passed me a copy of the
Post.
I stared at the back-page picture of a man doing something hostile to a football.

“Up front,” the driver said, pulling into the park. “That’s you, right?”

Considering some of the things the
Post
has said about me—and some of the pictures it’s run—I thought the better part of valor would be to throw the damn thing at a rock formation, littering laws or no littering laws. I could not, however, help myself. I turned it over. I looked down at one of those anonymous stretcher pictures that run periodically on the front pages of all New York newspapers, and a boxed inset of the Doubleday studio portrait from the back of my book. I looked up at the headline. I winced.

“HOSPITAL COVER-UP” was in 36 point, “W
HY THE LOVE GIRL’S DEATH MUST REMAIN SECRET
” was in 18. “Story on page 8” was only in 10 point, but I didn’t care. I had no intention of turning to page 8.

We pulled out onto upper Fifth Avenue, world of museums and art galleries with rents higher than their incomes. I considered engaging the cab driver in a discussion of Manhattan rents. Since the average “junior studio” (closet with hot plate) was running seven hundred a month at last count, discussions of rents in Manhattan can be cathartic.

The cab driver had his own idea of catharsis. “It looks like you,” he said. “But you’re not dead.”

“How can it look like me? That picture is so small, you need a magnifying glass to tell if it’s male or female.”

“Page 8.”

I turned to page 8. They had the complete set of “at-home” publicity stills I’d had taken for AST. I made a note to ensure that my escapee from Hunter College escaped permanently.

“So that’s you,” the driver said.

“Right,” I said. “That’s me.”

“And you’re not dead,” the driver said.

“Not yet.” But soon, I thought. Nick was going to kill me.

“Yeah,” the driver said. “I always thought the
Post
was full of shit.” Everybody does.

We pulled up in front of Caroline’s building, one of those cement block and glass cubes in the Forties, almost simultaneously with the fire trucks. A small knot of people had gathered on the sidewalk to watch. Other people were streaming out of the building or being held up by the doorman. I gave the cab driver five dollars and climbed into the street, craning my neck to see if there was smoke coming from one of the upstairs windows. There was nothing.

“Hope nobody was cooking you dinner,” the driver said.

I edged closer to the building. The crowd was well-dressed and polite—Manhattan fires attract the kind of spectator who would feel it beneath himself to watch if he lived anywhere else—but it was welded into a solid mass. It was difficult to make my way through. The firemen were running a relay race—first into the building, then out again, then in again, always single file—but none was covered with soot or sweat or anxiety. The air of emergency was routine.

I wedged myself between a woman with Adidases and briefcase (low-level management, Adidases were last year) and a man whose briefcase was so slim it couldn’t have held more than a credit-card slip. They were standing at the police barricade.

“Somebody was in there,” the woman said. “He’s burned to a crisp.”

“Nobody is burned to a crisp,” the man said. “The human body doesn’t work that way.”

The doorman stepped into the crowd and shouted, “Fourteenth floor, fourteenth floor.”

I looked through the crowd. I looked at the building. I squinted, trying to see to the end of the block in the distorting light of arc lamps. I turned toward the river and saw Caroline Dooley, her arm linked through the arm of an insufferable middle-aged man in herringbone tweed.